I ate a guinea pig!!!

Afternoon all!

I made it back from Peru in one piece. I travelled out there with my new collegue to teach him the ropes of commissioning. We had travelled the week before all over the US and this time we went straight from the US to Peru. After a 7 hour flight from Atlanta to Lima we got to our hotel at around midnight. As there was no bar in the hotel we got one of the porters to show us the way to a bar and we found a nice little samba place just around the corner. We had a few beers, yes, only a few, as we had to travel the next day to Arequipa.

The next day after some confusion where to take the plane from, we got to Arequipa around 5 in the evening. Mr Juan Fransisco was there to take us to the appartment. After we dropped our cases off he took us into town to see the centre of Arequipa.

Arequipa is a big 2 million person town. It is unique due to the fact that it is surrounded by three active volcanoes. But according to the locals it is completely safe, the last eruption was in 2002...

This is one of the volcanoes, I can't remember which one as I have the memory span of a goldfish. This was on the way to the cement plant, which was in the foothills of the Andes.
This is me posing in front of some other volconoes...

This, my friends, is special! Before I went out to Peru I knew that they ate guinea pigs. As I am quite adventureous (I ate goat in Indonesia, crickets in Mexico, snakes in Hong Kong...) I was determined to eat it if I could find it. So the first evening in a restaurant just of Plaza des Armas (The main square in Arequipa) when I was perusing the menu I was thrilled to see Alpaca and Cuy (guinea pig) on the menu. The first night I had Alpaca which was stunning. It is like a cross between really good beef and tender lamb, absolutely brilliant. The next night I went for it and ordered the 'whole guinea pig' from the grill. It comes with its head still on and all its claws etc...
This is it, laying on the plate with its little head on a potato. It tasted like a cross between badger and golden eagle. Only kidding... It tasted quite like chicken but a bit more fatty. It was also quite tricky to cut up. When you eat a chicken you know were the bones are and you know where to cut. In the end with this thing I just broke legs off and nibbled away. The meat on its tiny head was quite good too!

By the way, the pictures of the guinea pig are shite as I forgot my camera phone and my mate has a new Motorola flip phone which is a piece of shite. Its got no flash, no light, no space for memory cards, if you are looking for a good phone give this bastard a miss.... You can sortof make out the front teeth of the rat in the piccie if you look closely...

This was one of the main churches around Plaza des Armas, dunno which...

This is the front of the main cathedral in Arequipa. The left tower was knocked off in a recent earthquake but it was restored beautifully...

This is the menu that shows I am not lying. Cuy a la parilla is guinea pig from the grill and Bife de Alpaca is hairy Lama meat.
This was the Alpaca steak, blooming marvellous! There are some people around my way that keep alpacas for their wool. Maybe I should try to find out if they would be interested in eating the buggers when they stop giving wool. I would be happy to help them eat the buggers!
This was the local drink at the cement factory 25 km north west of Arequipa. It is a cross between RedBull and Irnbru. As it was full of cafeine it probably wasn't the best thing to drink just before going to bed, as I found out to my discust hahahaha...

If you are looking for a good nightclub in Arequipa go for Club Queens on Avenida Ejercito. Just knock on the door, if they like your mug they will let you in. Beer is reasonably priced at 8 soles per bottle and the staff is very friendly.

All in all we had an ace time in Peru. I would like to go back and actually spend some time in Lima as this time we only slept there for a few hours. Certainly the place to go to if you are into old piles of stone as they have Machupichu and Cusco and all sorts of other old stuff. They also have some unique wildlife there with the condor being the most famous.

OK, gotta go, busy busy busy, back to The Philippines in a weeks time,

Cheerio,

Alex.

Back in the good old US of A....

Morning All!

Another update from another corner of the globe. I am now in the USA for two jobs at Holcim Clarksville in Missouri and Southern Lime in Alabama. I arrived in the US on sunday from Gatwick. I flew into St Louis via Cincinatti. The weather was bloomin awful. Snow, cold, sleet, whatever, it was cold enough to freeze the balls of a brass monkey...

This trip I have a new guy with me. This is Matt who is the new apprentice commissioning engineer. At least I have someone to scrape the car windows for me... hahahaha... The job at Holcim went pretty well... I'm busy training Matt up so he can take some of the strain of the travel of me... The missus wasn't too impressed with me missing Valentines Day. Again. I think in the last 14 years I have been home twice for it... Ah well, it saves on flowers and choccies.
This is the bridge over the Mississippi at Louisiana. The river was frozen over but the huge river barges were still going... We stayed at the Hindu Hilton. It was actually called the Rivers Edge Hotel but the locals call it the Hindu Hilton as the guy who runs it is an Indian. The guy was very helpful to us. There are no taxis or cabs in Louisiana so he drove is across the bridge to The Lighthouse restaurant where they had fresh catfish and pork chops on the menu.
After St Louis we flew to Birmingham Alabama to go to Southern Lime in Calera. It was still cold but at least the snow stopped. The job is going slowly as we are waiting on some equipment from Black Box to arrive...
This is Matt doing his first scanner alignment and focus. So far so good, if he measures up it should relieve some of the pressure of me... My wife would like to see me home for some time of the year...

OK, gotta go, time waits for no man, off to Lima, Peru, tomorrow,

Alex.

My New Chinese friends...

Afternoon again!

Another update from the land of the camels...

Today we made a lot of progress. The scanner is up and running and the system is all hunkydory. The picture below you can see the electrical engineer putting the finishing touches to the temporary installation. The scanner is happy on the 220V single phase and the fan is happy chugging along on the 480V 3phase.

The scanner hut doesn't look like this anymore. I turned my back for a minute and now the hut has walls on all sides. The chinese workers really work fast I must say.

This is Mr Bin Yu from Zhejang putting the fibre modem in this morning.
This is (From left to right...) Mr Bin Yu, the electrical engineer, myself from www.thermoteknix.com and Mr Jin Guo Yao. Mr Jin Guo Yao is the interpreter and he has done an excellent job. Translating my english jabberings into fluent chinese can't be easy...
I don't really know who these other people in the picture are, I think they are operators that will run the kiln when it is up and running.

All in all the job is going very well. Tomorrow I will do the training on the equipment. The chinese compay will run the Northern Region Cement Plant for the first year while the arabic operators are being trained.

OK, I have to keep this short, it is nearly dinner time here. Yippee! More chinese food! Some people here have complained about the food but not me. It is bloody excellent, bring it on!

Cheerio,

Alex.

Where the hell am I?

Morning again...

For the people that have no idea where I am, here are two piccies clarifying where I am. I've placed a marker on the map for Turaif.

The bit just across the border in Iraq is the famous Al Anbar province where the Americans are having a lot of fun trying to win this 'War on Terror' or whatever it is they call it...
As you can see on the map there aren't any towns around where I am. Turaif is 80 km up the road and that is the nearest town... So I wasn't lying when I said in the middle of nowhere...

Cheerio,
Alex.

In the northern desert of Saudi Arabia...

Morning all,

Here is an update from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I finally arrived on-site on friday after spending two days in Jeddah doing nothing as I managed to miss my flight... (See previous entry...)

The place where is am is remote to say the least. I'm somewhere 80 km from Turaif and 200 km from Arar. It is really in the middle of nowhere. We are also only about 50 km from the southern border of Iraq. The airport in Arar is small to say the least. One shed is all there is. At least no queues anywhere.

I was picked up by the company driver from CNBM, the chinese construction company that is running the job. The guy was very friendly but conversation was limited as he only spoke arabic or chinese, both of which are not my strong point... Didn't stop us from jabbering and doing a lot of handsignalling hahahahaha!!!

After bombing through the desert for two hours we got to the site. As it was already late on in the day I met the site guys just to say hello and was then shown to my 'engineers quality' accomodation. Basic to say the least but is it sufficient. At least there is heating in it which I really need as the temperature is hovering around the freezing point which is weird for Saudi Arabia. I'm used to it being boiling here, normally it is around 45 degrees celsius in the Riyadh region but here it is ^$%$king cold. There was even some snow on the ground...

This is a piccie of my digs. Note the 2 by 4's for bed posts...

This was what it looked like for two hours between Arar and the site... Basically sand, rocks and camels... Impressive in a strange sort of way... We could have been on a different planet...

This is the cement plant control room. On the left is our system. (Strange chairs they have here...)

This is the kiln outlet of kiln 1. You can see the scale of the thing by looking at the two techie's standing on the edge of the burner platform.

These are the two technicians that are working with me. To my shame I have to say that I have not managed to remember their names, I have a crap memory. I think the guy on the right is Mr Jao. The guy on the left is the electrician that is doing the technical part of the installation.

The work itself is going fine. Most is already installed and the control room equipment is working fine. We do have a problem though. For me to be able to do temperature calibrations I need the kiln to be up and running. Unfortunately they had a catastrophic power failure which meant that the kiln will not restart till the end of february. So I probably will have to come back here in a month or so to finish the job off...

The food has been excellent, chinese for breakfast, chinese for lunch and guess what? Chinese for dinner. There are about 800 chinese workers here doing the construction.

OK, gotta get on with it, take care,

Alex in freezing Saudi Arabia.