Poor Spanish Dirt Farmer and Gas Turbine Engineer

My Spanish is coming along pretty slowly but I am being forced to listen and try to talk to the operators on the plant as they only speak Spanish and it is good for me to learn the hard way. I am also teaching basic gas turbine operations to the operators and with the help of the supervisor to translate and I am making easy work of it , even though this is my first time doing actual proper training, the problem is that these guys are only operators and they don’t really need too much detail but they are smart enough to know what sort of questions to ask about the combustion philosophy, which is very tricky and I am no expert so I mumble about modes of combustion and operating curves and relationships between NOx productions and flame temperatures. This makes me seem clever and they smile as though they understand but in truth I know as much about it as they do, I am just using the words in a clever way. They all seem very happy and it breaks the ice between foreign engineer and local operators so they all say hello and try their English but I am still lost in a conversation unless they talk very slowly like talking to a baby, basically that is what I am a Spanish baby.

I have actually been doing some proper work this last few days and it was quite enjoyable, I have been feeling unused and at a loose end for quite some time so doing some active work was OK. They had a shutdown on the plant and I had the opportunity to tackle many of the outstanding problems that had accumulated over the running of the plant for the last 6 months. I looked at the punch list of items and they I realised that I had no instructions for how to tackle them, in my total laziness I forgot to think about asking what each item needs to be finished. So at step one I was lost like a lamb in a snowstorm. So I did the only thing I could, I floundered about pointing my finger at anything that looked like it needed fixing and said that needs fixing. There were many things that I had found that needed fixing but it was basically a cover for me not knowing what really needed doing. We did complete many things but many more need attention still but I did feel very useful and all the guys working for me thought I knew what I was doing so that is the main thing, never let them think your nothing other than an engineering guru. And I was still able to do my butterfly rescue work and I am now getting all the guys on the plant looking at how beautiful they are and I get people coming to my office to look at my collection of dead ones. So my activities may encourage some conservation work and change a few attitudes eventually.

I have been here long enough now that I am starting to pine for the fiords of home in Costa Rica and only a Monty Python addict would understand that phrase. I am wanting my home comforts and a few beers and a relaxing time at the beach, which as I am hunting a house on the beach it is a good excuse to go drinking and dancing and taking some sun. The house we were told about that was so cheap did in fact turn out to be too good to be true, yes it wasn’t true at all. It was neither for sale or repossessed by the bank so we are back to square one, we need firstly to get a place to rent so that whatever we do we have somewhere to sleep at Christmas near the beach but I am not going to pay a lot of money for that. I could still end up buying a rundown farm in the hills and building a house there for me. Who knows if I save enough money I will quit and start being a poor dirt farmer. Print Article
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