Cynicism at a whole new level

I think there is something wrong with me. I actually get angry at people who die and curse at them for hours. Okay, reading that makes me sound really bad, so let’s start from the top. At the time of writing this, the day had been as unremarkable as any. Go to work, putter around doing boring work things, and come on home. However, on the train, I get a call, a good friend of mine here in London called to let me know that she had been stood up on her birthday dinner date and wanted to know if I wanted to fill in. Obviously, I told her that I was still about 15 minutes away, but of course I would join her for dinner. Thinking about what that meant for the rest of my evening, I called Rebecca to invite her along. Literally, as I was on the phone with Rebecca, my train stops, in the middle of nowhere. Never a good sign, but hopeful it’s just some congestion I don’t think about it. 15 minutes later, over the intercom, the train conductor announces “I apologize for the delay, but there has been a trespass at the next station.”  Shit, well, that’s going to delay things for awhile.  Now in a full text message conversation with my friend, I mention that this delay could be a while. So, like any friend of mine, she says call me when you get in, I’m going to the bar. Cool with that, I sit.

15 minutes later, the conductor comes over the intercom again and we have now been upgraded to someone has been struck by a train. Which in the UK is a not so subtle code for someone jumped in front of a train. Ugh, I really am going to be stuck here for a while. A full half hour now passes before I hear anything else which is to now let us know that we are not going to be moving for at least 45 more minutes. It was apparently the train right in front of us. This means that we can’t do anything. If it had been further ahead, we could have changed rails and gone around, but since we are stuck. Now, I’m now sitting here, in my seat, over 2 hours late for my friend watching trains going past on the alternative rail line cursing at someone who has obviously gone through something bad enough to cause them to end their life and all I can think is you stupid selfish bastard. It’s really quite horrible, so as soon as that thought goes into my head, I start to feel like a huge jackass. Then thinking about how I’m a jackass, I start to think about how the person was a bastard and the cycle continues.

I’ve come up with a solution at this current point, which is booze, but as this train continues to not move (now at hour 3 not having moved) the limited amount of train food stock is quickly diminishing.

Thanksgiving

The story of Canadian thanksgiving actually starts well before the actual day, and here in the UK is quite an effort to deal with. First, the UK doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, neither the Canadian or the American (and really why would they? It wasn't their expedition to the Arctic circle, or them almost starving to death), but when you tell them about how it’s a day in which you sit around, socialize and eat all day, they usually think that it’s a good idea and that they would like to partake. Add in all the North Americans that already love the holiday and the event can become rather large, rather quickly. So before we even got to the day of the event we had 14 people RSVP to the event and Rebecca continually inviting more guest. Next, the only time that I have ever come close to cooking a Thanksgiving dinner before was in Morenci two years ago. But, the only reason I say I came close was because I was in the kitchen at the same time that Lance was cooking things. I don’t believe I touched anything. I still hadn't passed Lance’s tests for allowing me to do any actual work.  Now, just a short time after that, I'm the one that cooking and better than that, at the time of writing this, I still haven’t heard of anyone getting sick because of me. Progress.

The first thing that was needed when cooking a Thanksgiving meal for fourteen is a decently sized turkey. This posed two distinct and worrisome problems. The first was that, as you may recall from the first story about cooking, is that we have a very small oven, and fitting a large bird in it would be difficult to say the least. The second was that in the UK, turkeys are really only sold at Christmas time. Since they don’t have Thanksgiving, they don’t have a grocery store full of turkeys in October (or November for the Americans). We were faced with two options. One, we could buy a turkey online from a specialty store for an exorbitant amount, or we found a store in Stowmarket that sold frozen turkeys at a reasonable price. No brainer right? Wrong. After being the person on a two hour train ride with a frozen turkey in their arms, I can guarantee that strange stares that you get are just something not ready for. Second, at about the one hour mark, the turkey will start to defrost and ice/water/red liquid will start dripping everywhere. So yes, I was that crazy person on a train with a large dripping frozen bird in their arms. The second issue that we had with this was that we panicked. Worried that the turkey supply would be limited we purchased and transported the turkey on the Monday, for a Saturday dinner. As I said, by the time I got the bird home, it was already well on its start to defrosting. This meant that putting it in the freezer was not a good idea, but as we found out, putting a defrosting bird in the fridge 5 days early isn’t the best plan either. You would be shocked at the amount of red liquid that will come out of a defrosting turkey and cover the bottom of your fridge. It’s really quite remarkable. Thankfully, other than some worrying and a lot of cleaning, the turkey was still fine on Saturday and was able to be cooked. Otherwise it would have been the multiple chickens from the local grocery store dinner.

After turkey, the things in the meal really become a bit of a discussion and since this was also Rebecca and I’s first Thanksgiving as a married couple we wanted to incorporate things from both our families. Me, I needed to have cranberry cheesecake for dessert. Rebecca, she needed both normal stuffing as well as sausage meat stuffing. After all the different things were added together the meal consisted of: turkey, sage and onion stuffing (both cooked in the turkey and out for the vegetarians), sausage meat stuffing, roasted potatoes, mashed potatoes, mashed yams, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, a mixed salad, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, fresh buns, sliced pickles, quorn, gravy, cranberry cheesecake and of course pumpkin pie. It was a production. Thankfully our neighbor and good friend, Stephanie was on board with the ridiculousness of putting that many people in one small London apartment and helped out by letting us use her table, chairs, dishes, cutlery and kitchen. By the end of the cooking time, we had two ovens full of things and 7 of the 8 combined burners being used to cook. All in all, the meal went off great. Everyone seemed to have a good time and other then being reasonably intoxicated by the end of the day, it all went perfectly. Who am I kidding, being reasonably intoxicated was pretty much according to plan as well. Rebecca even helped with the cooking, true, I relegated her to things that could be eaten raw in like the veggies so there was no chance of her poisoning anyone. Kidding, she’s not as bad of a cook as either of us make out and contrary to what she says, she can cook more than a bowl of cereal and a mean takeout.

Welcoming everyone to Thanksgiving dinner.

Actually, I take back that everything went according to plan. Apparently, me and pumpkin pie are bitter enemies. I made two for the Thanksgiving dinner and they were… meh, at best. Most people enjoyed them, but they weren’t the highlight. Thought, even if they were, I have found out that most here in the UK don’t like pumpkin anyways. It’s a travesty, I know. If I had to guess, I think I didn’t add enough of the spices to them, but to be fair I got the pumpkin at 3pm on the day and had to make the pie in quite a rush. The next day however, when I had all the time in the world to make a pie for my coworkers that I promised and forgot to add the eggs, I have no excuse. The pie tasted right this time, but instead of being sturdy and normal, it was more runny and more like apple pie gooey. Oops… I still don’t think this is a good reason for UK contingent telling me that pie was too spicy for them. Oh well, more pie for me.

I am happy that I can say that it was a great day, but I will be the first to say that if anyone asks me to do one for American Thanksgiving in a month, I’m going to tell them to sod off. Sitting on a train with a half frozen bird and the chaos of trying to keep that many dishes from burning (which is something I do regularly enough) is an adventure that I will reserve for only once a year.

Thailand Part 2 – Actually doing things

So far all I have talked about was the joyous adventure of travelling around in Thailand and unfortunately it kind of made it sound as if we didn’t have a good time, which is absolutely the opposite of the  truth. Thailand was gorgeous and I couldn’t have had spent two weeks in a better place. We ended up spending 6 days in Bangkok, 4 days in Chiang Mai and 3 days in Hua Hin and in each place it was a new experience. In Bangkok we lived up the chaotic city life, Chiang Mai we did the group tours of everything as well as night market shopping, and in Hua Hin we sat on the beach and at the pool drinking and wasting the day away. So, I’m going to write about some of the things that I thought we’re the most exciting.

Bangkok

For our first 6 days we were in Bangkok and I swear I went into colour shock. The city itself was a big city. It was covered in the grey of skyscrapers, roads and over ground railways, it was filthy, and it reeked of fish sauce. Around every corner however, was a gorgeous Buddhist temple decorated in the most vibrant colours. On the first day, we started off big and we saw the Grand Palace, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha and Wat Po with the Reclining Buddha.  

The Grand Palace at Night, still vibrant

Upon entering the Grand Palace, Rebecca and I stood in shock for what seemed to be half an hour simply spinning and taking photos.  Well, Rebecca was taking photos at least. I was making friends with the monkey men warrior figurines.  Wat Po wasn’t much different. Everywhere you turned was another image of Buddha and more vibrant colours. Additionally, Wat Po has some of the most renowned Thai massages so we stopped in there to try that out. Now, let me preface this with the fact that I’m not usually a fan of massages period, but this being our honeymoon and Rebecca’s love of massages, I did it anyways. Also, I’m really NOT flexible, like I can barely touch my mid shin let alone my toes. Next, let me tell you, a traditional Thai massage is nothing like a normal massage. It’s not relaxing, it’s invigorating…. For over an hour I had a 5 foot 4 Thai guy beating the crap out of me. Some of my favorite maneuvers were:  The twist your leg and step on your inner thigh, the put my knee in your back and bend you in two and  the screwdriver,  twist your top half as far as he could one way while twisting my bottom half as far as he could the other way. I could see how it would be possible that experience would be enjoyable, but I’m almost certain that my masseuse was confusing my lack of flexibility with tension so every time he did something, he would push to a point that was ok, then feeling some resistance push harder.  After an hour and Rebecca being delighted with the experience, I limped onto the next adventure.  On top of seeing amazingly colourful temples, we would get a blast of neon and blinking lights walking between the subway and our hotel. Unknown to us, our hotel was about a block from Soi Cowboy, one of the various red light districts in Bangkok. 

Floating Markets

The street was full of people and it seemed like quite the place to be, but when we would get up in the morning and have breakfast watching the middle aged white men and young Thai girls come down and eat breakfast too, the desire to really party there dwindled quickly. No matter  how many times we got asked if we wanted to see a ping pong show.  Also, we went to see the floating markets, the concept itself being really cool. The practicality of it however being terrible. It’s extremely hard to shop when you don’t control where you are going.  Compound that by the fact that you can’t go back to anything you pass, and while it is fun to see, you can see how it becomes almost impossible to buy anything you want . 

Chiang Mai

The middle of our trip was spent in Chiang Mai, and was highlighted by three things. The first was the night markets. There were two night markets, one on the weekend that shuts down the entire center of the city and turns all the streets into vendor stalls and the second one that was every night just outside our hotel. 

Night market where we honed our bartering skills

This was where you had to really hone your bartering skills and you had to be smart.  By the end of it, I thought that we were finally starting to get the hang of it too. But almost every time that we would barter something to a price we liked we would find it somewhere else for cheaper. Oh well, apparently Rebecca and I don’t have a career as a salesperson to look forward to. The second thing was the Thai cooking course we went on.  We ended up on the course with another British couple (we apparently have a knack for finding Brits) and a German girl. It was great fun, it’s not like we learnt anything all that ground breaking, but the group we were with was very easy to get along with and chat with and we sat around eating all day. I mean, you can’t really complain about that can you.  

Our Group and Teacher after gorging on food all day.

The last major highlight had to be the elephant park. First, we got to see some of the trained elephants do some tricks like shoot soccer penalty shots and shoot basket ball free throws. Both cool, but not nearly as ridiculous as watching the trainers pull out two easels and have two of the elephants  paint for us and not just random squiggles you could call abstract art. Still in awe of that we then got to go on an elephant ride with a trainer sitting on the elephant’s neck/head trekking us through the jungle. At the halfway point the trainer said that this would be the point we could feed the elephant (who I’m going to name Stampy, he was a bit ornery) some bananas as a treat. He then told me to come sit up in front to feed it. So, as I get down from the nice securely fastened seats and sit on this elephant’s head to feed it, the trainer sneaks into my seat and straps himself in. 

Me, holding on for dear life

As soon as the last of the bananas are eaten, the trainer makes a clicking noise and Stampy was off. I quickly think oh shit, I need to get back to my seat, turn around and see the trainer sitting in my seat telling me that I have to trek the rest of the way back up front. This was definitely riding an elephant. The only thing I would advise to the next person to ride an elephant, long pants. What I didn’t know was that elephants are really quite hairy, and their hair is coarse and hard like steel wire. So, every time Stampy took a step, his hair would rub against my inner leg and take off a new layer of skin, but that was easily worth the experience.

Hua Hin

We ended our trip in Hua Hin, a small fishing town on the Gulf of Thailand. I don’t really have anything to say about it. The extent of it was really spent going from the beach, to the poolside.  It was however, a perfect way to end our adventure to Thailand. 

It was a hard life in Hua Hin as you can tell. 

Thailand - Part 1 - Transportation

One of the most celebrated traditions of a groom is to plan a beautiful relaxing honeymoon for his new wife for after the wedding. I mean she does so much planning for the wedding, it’s the least he can do right? A time honored tradition, to show the equality in the relationship. Then there is me and Rebecca. Not only did we not go on our honeymoon right after the wedding, but it was easily more planned by the bride than me.  It was still a team effort, but there was definitely no big surprise for the bride at the airport for where she was going.  So as the title eludes, we went on our honeymoon to Thailand and to say that there were a few stories would be a bit of an understatement.  First, and probably most continuously problematic, was simply getting from one place to another.
The journey started on the morning of the 20th (August)  when we left from London Heathrow to Bangkok with a stop in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Now, me personally, I had an amazing flight. I would even argue that it was the best airline food that I had eaten.  I didn’t even  mind the stop in Colombo. The airport was nice, it had free internet. Sure, instead of airport security it had armed army personnel, but it really didn’t seem to bad. Rebecca had a bit different experience though. On the first leg of the journey she ended getting half food poisoned, half air sick and that persisted all the way to Bangkok. Even while on the ground in Colombo my darling wife’s complexion was closer to that of a lime than anyone should really be.  A wonderful way to start our romantic honeymoon.
Upon arrival in Bangkok, we quickly learnt that everything is to be bartered for, and I’m pretty sure that there is a running competition in Thailand to see who can get the white boy to overpay by the most. We first learnt this with our very first cab ride in the city. If you only speak English, the first price they quote is 5 times the correct price. We asked about a cab to our hotel, 250 baht. Not bad, only 5 pounds and seeing as we didn’t have a clue where our hotel was it seemed reasonable. A block later we got dropped outside our hotel… worse yet, the hotel staff let us know that our trip should have only been 50 baht.  We later learnt that if you ask for the cab to meter you don’t have to barter, which is easier when you are exhausted. Other modes of transport in Bangkok we took included a decently easy to use subway system that didn’t go anywhere near any of the tourist destinations, a ferry boat system that if you weren’t sure where you were suppose to get off meant that you would end up quickly outside of the city and the famous tuk-tuk’s that were easily the most popular legal version of Russian Roulette that I have ever see. Now tuk-tuk’s weren’t isolated to Bangkok, but they were easily most terrifying there. On roads with lanes that changed direction depending on which direction was more adventurous, these three wheeled open aired taxies would hurdle themselves through any small opening that they could fit through (even if it was the lane of oncoming traffic) in order to save anytime they could. Add in the fact that on top of them, there were literally thousands of scooters everywhere, traffic could be packed as far as the eye could see with regular cars and that in Thailand you don’t need a seatbelt, it was easy to see why we were always thankful to make it to the end of our tuk tuk journeys in one piece.

Tuk Tuk 

The next transportation journey was the epic journey from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. Now, in Bangkok, almost every day somebody would tell us that whatever thing we were going to was closed, but for a small fee they could take us to “the lucky Buddha” or “the big Buddha” both of which don’t exist. So needless to say we started to become quite skeptical of anyone that would come up to us and tell us anything unsolicited. So naturally, when we got to the train station for our quiet sunset/overnight sleeper train to Chiang Mai and the first person we see tells us that our train is cancelled we automatically ignore them and walk past them and go pick up our luggage that we stored earlier in the day. When the second person comes and tells us the same thing we look closer to her shirt and it reads “Enjoy Thailand by Train” we are still skeptical but are starting to believe them. We then talk to the train ticket agent and they tell us the same thing, we realize were in trouble. Instead of the nice train with beds, we get to take a bus. Not just any bus however, a VIP bus. So me, Rebecca, 4 other British tourists that we meet and 2 people that didn’t really feel the need to chat, all get shuttled off to get the bus. Still feeling like we were being played (mainly as there wasn’t a single thai person and the bus had cost us more than the train) we got taxied to the bus station. Otherwise known as a tiny restaurant in the middle of a street and told to wait there for our VIP bus. Crap, this is getting shadier by the second, but at this point they tell us that they will be graciously stopping for dinner during the trip. Oddly enough they will be stopping at midnight, but whatever. Finally the VIP bus arrives to dazzle us and dazzle it did. Build in the 1970’s with all the modern décor of pastel blue with the faint musk of mold, it was everything we could ever hope for. But that wasn’t all, we also got a many hour long video of a live Thai rock show. You would have thought that would have been annoying and stopped you from sleeping, but that wasn’t even close to a concern. Yes the rock shows flashing lights may have kept you awake, but that was only if the fact that the bus was driving 90 miles an hour weaving through traffic on a monsoon didn’t. The driver was creating a nice rocking motion like the ocean from the combination of hydroplaning and traffic weaving. As promised, at midnight we stopped for dinner at some stop, don’t bother asking where. Here we were offered a choice of mystery meal that smelt terrible, even by truck stop standards, and bottled water. Easy choice.  Another interesting note, buses are much faster than trains and when we got to Chiang Mai at 6 in the morning instead of 10 am like planned, hotels don’t really have your room ready. Who knew?

VIP Bus 

In Chiang Mai we experienced a new method to get around. There the preferred method to get from place to place was in the back of converted pickup trucks. They would run cushioned seats along each side of the bed with a canopy for cover. It really wasn’t too bad, unless of course you looked at the back end and noticed the fact that while they had cut a nice hole to act as a door to get in and out of the back, there was now nothing between you and the sliding out the back end and into traffic.

New Chiang Mai Transport

Even though we were on slippery vinyl seats, this wasn’t really a problem for people as we could grab hold of something. Luggage however, it couldn’t hold anything, so it liked to try and escape for freedom whenever it saw an opportunity.

Train to Bangkok

By the time we left Chiang Mai, the landslide that prevented the train ride up had now been cleared up and we were able to take the sleeper train down to Bangkok and then onto Hua Hin. Whether this was a good thing or not is still very much up for debate, but it was easily a new adventure. The train itself was fine. It moved about the same speed as a lost cow, but we did it in style. One thing that we didn’t think about however was the fact that they served us food, that unlike the random bus stop we stopped at, looked and smelt good. Unfortunately, the trains are generally taken most by the Thai people and because of that the food was cooked for the Thai palette. In many ways this is fine, but one thing that we had learnt about earlier in our cooking course (I’ll talk about that in a later story) was that all tourists food is about a tenth as spicy as a normal Thai meal. Combined with the fact that Rebecca already thought the food was too spicy and I thought it was at a good level, my face literally melted as I ate the curry that was given. Worse yet was that, even though I was dying with each bite (I know, the folks with ties to the southwest will be calling me a wimp, but ie-whey-la! (anyone actually know how to spell that?)) , it was extremely tasty, so I couldn’t help but to keep eating. 

Train Food

The second issue came when we started talking to a nice German on the train with us. We were starting to get worried as the train was supposedly getting to Bangkok 30 minutes from the time it was and we were still in the jungle.  Apparently, the arrival times were only for suckers. No trains ever ran on time and usually they were a hour or two late (worst we saw was a train that was 8 hours late). With our connection scheduled to leave an hour and 45 minutes after scheduled arrival, we started to panic. Stopping at every road crossing in Bangkok (trains stop for cars, not cars for trains like the west. Crazy, I know) and having to wait for street vendors to move their stalls of the tracks, we jumped out of the train and made our way to our connection.  So amongst the hoards of five foot five Thais, me and Rebecca were sprinting through the station with two large suit cases running half aimlessly, because we can’t read Thai and didn’t know where our train was departing from, towards our train. Thankfully, we ended up making our connection literally as it was pulling out of the station and were on our way to sit on a beach in Hua Hin and not deal with anymore transportation until we were travelling back to the UK.
“Beep! Beep! Beep!” 5:00 am, Saturday, September 3rd the alarm goes off in our hotel room and we get to begin our journey back to London. Why so early? Well, there are only 2 trains from Hua Hin to Bangkok a day. One at 6:30 am and one late night. Since the late one would have us miss our plane, (especially given that trains run hours late anyways) the early morning was the only option. Get to the station 15 minutes before the train is suppose to arrive, naively optimistic, and prep for our train. When we get there we are told that the trains are running a little late so we would have to wait. At 7:15 am, 45 minutes after our train was suppose to leave, the 4 am train heading south arrives.  Startled, we decide that it would be best if we clarified what was meant by running  “a little late.”  What they meant by a little late was, over 2 and a half hours late, with no definite timeline.

Delay Time For Thai Trians

Shit! Good thing we had planned to have 9 hours in Bangkok before even needing to go to the airport. Time crawled on, with no idea about when the train would actually be arriving we tried not to think about the cruel alarm clock that stole the comforts of a bed away seemingly hours too early. As 8 o’clock rolled past, a flurry of trains all came through the station, each time we sat up with anticipation, only to have the station attendant dash our hopes by shaking his head at us and saying, not this train. Eventually, one of the ticketing agents finds us and tells us that they can switch our tickets to a new train to Bangkok and that would be the next train at the station. Eager to get moving we switched our tickets and fifteen minutes later were on the 5:30 am train to Bangkok (at almost nine).  With vendors, selling everything from souvenirs to hot and cold food, marching up and down the aisle of the train we made our way to the city, arriving sometime after one. In Bangkok, we tried to muster up the desire to do some shopping, but tired we decided to grab some food and just go to the airport a little early and just sit and rest.  We ended up at the airport 4 hours before departure and an hour before check in was available, so we found a seat and let time drift away. What seemed to be eon’s past (actually only an hour, but when you are bored, EON’S!) and check in opened up so we got into line to eagerly get rid of our heavy luggage. It only took a few moments before both me and Rebecca noticed that something was terribly wrong. Each person checking in ahead of us (which was a large number, especially for 3 hours before flight time) was taking an extremely long time and at the end was given a box that looked to contain a meal. According to the agent, the plane had been delayed in China and was going to be 2 hours late. DOES ANYTHING IN THIS COUNTRY RUN ON TIME? Seriously? Well at least they were giving us a meal. WHAT! We were still on the ground and they were giving us shitty airplane food! This wasn’t right, but with no other choice, we ate our food (which wasn’t allowed past security as well) and continued past security. One thing that I will commend the airport with was that there were areas with comfy leather sofa’s to crash on and we even had the nature channel to keep us entertained for the delay. I could talk about how we ended up with 12 hour layover back in Sri Lanka and a stop to pick up more people in the Maldives (which don’t have an island big enough for a landing strip so they had to make one, which is freaky to land on) but I’ve rambled long enough and really, long planes aren’t that exciting of an adventure. So, I will end this story here and say that we got back to London at midnight Sunday, September 4th to end the long trek home.

Sean the Alchemist

              So,  I’ve been asked by a few people now, “ I know that you have a new job in a place called Stowmarket, but what do you actually do?” So I thought I would write about it. The short and boring answer is that I make Ferro-Molybdenum using an aluminothermic reaction.  This however poses two problems. One, most people don’t have a clue what Ferro-Molybdenum is, and two, it just doesn’t sound like nearly as much of a good time as it really is.  

(think like this but much bigger scale (7 tonnes) and in a big bucket, not cutting a car in half)

Mythbusters Playing with Thermite

The better answer is that I’m an a mad scientist. See, it already sounds more exciting, but I can’t start there, first I need to like all stories, at the beginning.

                I work for Climax Molybdenum in a small facility in the UK that is a subsidiary of the company I used to work for Freeport McMoRan. It’s actually so small that most FMI employees have never heard of it.  We have approximately 75 total employees of which, three are at all technical. One is me,  as the engineer, the second is the lab supervisor (Oddly enough not his technicians though), and the third is my boss (a chemical engineer by trade, but spends all his day managing people). And with my arrival, our manager has decided that the group has apparently become big enough to be called the “Techno-Weenies.”  To put it into perspective,  each week I send out a few graphs that show key process variables so that we can monitor how we ran the last week in comparison to how we normally run. Two days ago, one of the people that I send those out to stopped me and thanked me for sending them out to him and that they were quite neat looking, but he had no idea whatsoever what he was looking at. As in, didn’t know why we would have a graph of % Molybdenum in our final product, even thought that’s what we sell. I know that this doesn't make sense why I'm telling you this, but bear with me. Why I'm explaining this is just to explain that most of my coleagues know that we do what we do, but haven't got a good understanding of why or how it works. Which is what I'm suppose to do. This has it’s advantages.

The main advantage is that when we want to switch to a new material I get to test it. I know, this doesn’t sound too exciting, but in order to do these tests, I’ve been given a cement mixer and told to try and make mixtures of about 10 kilograms of these explosives (Because you can’t possibly hope to learn anything from anything smaller, and quite frankly when I tried the next size larger I may have had a bit of a “Rapid detonation of the reaction materials” or simply put a big bang) in a shed in the back of the property, that has been renamed sean's boom boom shed, I wonder why?  This is where the mad scientist comes in. I spend my day concocting different mixtures of explosives and then igniting them in a sand lined garbage can. The bounds of what I can try are only limited to what I think may work. Some examples of this are that we currently use calcium fluoride in our reaction, but it has the adverse side effect of making gas that isn’t great for the environment. This means that while it is helpful in the reaction, the cost of having to control and prevent the gas from escaping makes it almost not worth using. So, I have been told to find a replacement. Suggestions have ranged from just taking it out and seeing what happens to adding Borax, the laundry detergent. Now, I generally know what’s going to happen before, otherwise I would be decently terrible at my job. But, when someone who doesn’t know what I’m doing, which is most of the site, walks up to me and I’m covered with dust with a cement mixer and a garbage can shooting sparks eight feet into the air. Explaining it can become quite difficult and hence I get quickly labelled a mad scientist.

Like I said, while what I do is make Ferro-Molybdenum. I am really a mad scientist. So if you hear about an explosion tragically involving an engineer in eastern England you won't have to ask any questions about what happened.

London, A Little Dirty

So, a few weekends ago, Rebecca and I were visited by a most welcome house guest. Mike came and visited before he flew back to Vancouver.  Before I start this story, I feel that it is important to explain the friendship dynamics that me and Sanchez have. Firstly, Mike and I went to UBC together and then met up again in Arizona, him in Globe and myself in Morenci. An average visit with him meant that I/a group of us would stop in globe on the way to Phoenix and we would then spend the next two days trying to decided what to do. This usually meant that what we did was meander about, drink, eat, and discuss what we thought we should do, which was usually not much. I personally thought it was great. Add in Woot and the trifecta of indecisiveness was complete and don’t get me started on the inability to make decisions if you added Jarred.

But let’s continue with the story at hand. About a month ago, Mike emails to let me know that he will be in town and that we should hang out. Simple instructions and I quote “Yeah, let’s do something. I don’t really want to see the tourist stuff.” OK, this is going to take a bit of thought. Usually Rebecca is the master at things to see in London, but she loves to do all the things I would probably define as touristy. But, yeah, there are a bunch of cool things that we can do in London that aren’t touristy at all. I’ll do some research and we’ll figure something out.

Advance to Thursday before he gets here. Shit! Sean you’ve not done a lick of planning, as usual. Well, we can discuss with Mike when he arrives to get a better feel. But there is a couple really neat bars we could go too, some different food options. It will be good.

Friday, Mike comes into London, where I of course am late to pick him up, but it’s all good.  We chill, for the night and decide what to see Saturday. Here is a look at the photo’s of what we did in London.

Figure 1 - The Tower of London

Figure 2 - The Globe Theater

Figure 3 - St. Paul's

Figure 4 - Big Ben

Figure 5 - Westminster Abbey

Figure 6 - Buckingham Palace

As you can see, the "no tourist things" went out the window. We even got a pub lunch of fish n Chips in there.  We walked from the Tower of London all the way to Buckingham Palace and made sure to see every thing on the way. Including a lovely piece of 2 inch steel sheet in the Tate Museum of Modern Art. I still say the artist took the easy approach and the piece would have been much more striking as 3 inch plate, but what do I know.  I also learnt that my wife is in the wrong profession. Most would agree and say that she has the personality for school teacher or some other peppy position. But, what she should be is a tour guide. Without a doubt in my mind. Walking about giving the details on each thing that we walked past. I highly recommend the experience.  Unfortunately, Mike’s camera decided to bugger up. Right at the end of the two week vacation.

After the walking tour of London we spent the evening at a Canada Day BBQ. Simple BBQ, nothing to really mention, except that one of the hosts friends, who is actually a old house mate apparently will let anybody in the world stay with at his apartment, so he brought the two people currently crashing at his place. An Austrian hitchhiker and a shaggy dude wearing pants with one leg red and the other green. I won’t lie, when I saw them I immediately thought about Lance and his love of crazy people.

But alas, Sanchez had to be on a morning flight out so we had to end the visit and we sent him on his merry way to Heathrow and on his adventure back to Canada. 

Sean vs British Rail

So, as you all know, I’ve started a new job. All in all, I am enjoying the new experience. It’s really quite neat to go from somewhere like Morenci that had thousands of employees and took almost an hour to drive from one side to the other, to Stowmarket in which I already know almost every employees name and can walk across in about 5 minutes. But the one thing that I didn’t see coming was the epic battle that would become my life versus the National Rail.

First, let’s get something straight, I think that the UK national rail system is great. Maybe not the best in the world, but it makes an absolute mockery of anything I have ever seen in North America. There is no where that I have lived in which an hour and a half commute by train would be possible.  I mean, if I miss a train, that sucks, but it’s a half hour and then the next one will take me on my merry way. Even thought I work in a small English Village.

However, some of the things I’ve had to deal with are the most ridicules things that I have ever heard of. Let’s just go over this week. Monday, the whole of Britain was in a joyous mood as the weather hit the highest that it had hit in the entire year. At a toast 33 degrees Celsius (92 F, for the Americans in the crowd) , National rail had to cancel many trains as it was too hot. Wait, 33 is too hot?  This isn’t good, and summer has really just started.  Apparently all of Britain would shut down if it ever had to deal with a month of Arizona summer.  And to make things so much better, I spent the entire train ride next to a parent and their two children that were, A) Bored, therefore acting out and yelling, and B) because the kids were acting out, the parent kept yelling at them to stop embarrassing them.  At least, I had something to watch for three hours. Always stay positive. Next, apparently in the UK after a really hot day (hehe, that still makes me giggle thinking that 33 is a really hot day) there will be thunder storms. Ah, the UK is a country build on rain, I’m not too worried about it. Tuesday…. First the morning train is delayed due to recovering from the excessively hot day, then the night train home is slowed to a crawl due to flooding. Seriously? Flooding? In the UK? It rains here almost every day. Wednesday, we decided that weather was no longer a reason to have issues. Nope, it was going to be a train failure. Somewhere ahead of us a train had stopped moving and that meant that I got a lovely few of an empty field for a good long time. I mean, would it have been too much to ask for us to have been stopped so we could at least see some cows? I’m really not a hard person to please here or better yet somewhere with connectivity for my trusty Google phone? No, middle of an empty field…  That brings us to Thursday, better known as today, and I can proudly say, that as I sit here and write this, the train is chugging a long quite nicely. So here’s hoping nothing changes on that front.

This week hasn’t been the only case of National Rail trying to beat me. If you remember upon arrival the trains tried their best to get me lost somewhere in Northern England never to make it to Scotland. Then you had Rebecca’s fun getting stuck trying to get down from Scotland and then there is my personal favorite. Thankfully, I didn’t have to live through this one personally, but last fall the train ended up being  delayed and cancelled because of leaves. Yes, you read that correctly, leaves. But according to the railway if it had been just normal leaves things would have been fine, but these leaves were different and caused all sorts of issues. This now means I have a mission before fall, find out what tree leaves are these so called special ones, and burn down all those kinds of trees within a mile of my route home.

So, I would like to keep saying, I am still enjoying taking the train, but ugh. Sometimes these things are just… wait a second, message over the PA… shit, this is going to be an adventure…