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Archive for February, 2013

Not such a good trip

February 15th, 2013 at 02:45 pm

I finally get to go to East Timor day after tomorrow. When I arrived, I went straight from the airplane to the helicopter. I didn't even clear Timor L'este's customs or immigration, but I get to on the way back. I have one night to overnight in town.

DW hurt her back while I was over here. The boss is helping out by getting her to the doctor and physical therapy. They're doing some kind of massage, steroid, and machine-assisted (shock and ultrasound?) therapy, but it isn't helping. There's nothing I can do from over here.

This job has been the definition of "snake bit." Every time we fixed something, something else was found to be wrong. We go "back on contract" tomorrow morning, which means the folks paying for this excursion start getting money from the client again. At least we saved them on the two-year contract overall.

The only good outcome from all of this is that I have had nothing but "no spend days" since I've been here. DW was left with minimal funds and there is absolutely no way to actually spend money here offshore. DW has an account with several thousand dollars in it at her fingertips. Were it an emergency SHE deemed worthy, she could spend it, with the understanding that I reimburse it immediately upon my return. Apparently, in her mind, doctor visits and medical treatments are not emergencies.

I wonder what IS an emergency in her book? I'm thinking "alien invasion or asteroid strike" apparently.

Oh, she has credit cards, as well. I did not leave her without resources. I travel fairly regularly and on short notice, so we have contingency plans set up for just such instances.

This means that we'll be 100% back on track for the mortgage pay off. Although it is still 8 months off (maybe more, maybe less), I can almost smell the smoke of the paperwork. I hate this part of paying off things; the anticipation when it is still a bit far off.

Country 72

February 2nd, 2013 at 02:32 pm

We have a good client who has an emergency. I sent my best engineer out to his site, but even he has failed to find and correct the problem.

So, it is up to me to head out there. I'll either be a knight in shining armor, or a goat. There's not much room between the two in our industry.

Regardless, due to this trip, I get to chalk up country number 72 in my travels. East Timor gets the spot. I looked it up online. By the street names, it looks like they speak some variation of Portuguese, but I'm not certain. I guess I'll find out when I get there.

Now, all my other projects have to be put on hold for a week. I'm none too happy about that, as we have a very large project coming up that needs some up-front work. Oh, well. That's why they pay me.