Up until the last week or so my time here has seen a very smooth unfolding of events at the power plant, but this is no longer the case as I mentioned in my previous blog. Stress levels are on the increase with the staff here as every time a problem is fixed another one emerges. However, one must search for the silver lining of the cloud and draw some positives from the situation. From my student’s point of view, the current state of affairs has given me the opportunity to witness my colleagues working under pressure and keeping a level head to keep things on schedule. It’s one thing to be able to bask in your glory when things are going according to plan, it’s another when you have to react to unpredictable situations with no obvious answer.

If you read last week’s blog I was rambling on about how there was a weird noise coming from inside Bearing 6, part of the steam turbine and the plant had to shutdown. By Tuesday the turbine had cooled down enough for the engineers to open up the bearing to get a look inside. It wasn’t obvious what was causing the knocking noise though my learned colleagues did notice several wires belonging to instrumentation probes had been totally sliced apart. My team mates from the commissioning office were rather displeased with this finding as you can imagine and the debate was whether the wire cuts had occurred due to extreme friction inside the bearing or if the wires and surrounding machinery had been installed inside the bearing incorrectly in the first place. However, the bigger question remained; what was causing that knocking sound?

Apparently spare parts are hard to come by in this kind of work so a lot of the damaged wires and probes mentioned above were repaired rather than replaced. It was a rather Homer Simpson ‘Doh!’ moment when the sub contractor engineers then returned with said repaired items, destroyed once again as they incorrectly put the bearing casing back together. I heard at one point a casing was put back in upside down…

After work on Tuesday my German colleague Christop invited me out with him to the concert in the park that usually takes place in Breda every Tuesday. However when we arrived we found out that it was cancelled due to the rain and thunder storms that day. As we were already out we decided to go to a bar instead; the place I mentioned the other week that plays all the awesome rock music. On our arrival, my new friend, the resident DJ Weibe informed us that tonight was an open jam night and people were welcome to go on the stage and pick up an instrument. After a while the singer on the stage asked if anyone in the audience played guitar and as I had a few beers giving me some Dutch courage (pardon the pun) I raised my hand and the next thing I knew I was on the stage jamming Jimmy Hendrix and Beatles tunes with the band. My first step of breaking into the European music scene!

Thursday saw a welcome change in my exercise regime. As I was leaving the office in the evening, Biova invited me to join him and some of the other guys to play basketball in Breda. It had been a while since I last hustled a basketball court in da hood, nevertheless I tried my best at shooting some hoops.

Due to a late finish at work, I never had the chance to go out on Friday night. Everyone was exhausted trying to prepare the power plant for a restart. It was hoped that we would restart the same night in the end it was put off till the following morning. On the plus side however, as we were working late, the site manager kindly ordered in a massive pizza delivery courtesy of GE.  

As per my usual Saturday morning routine I went to do my laundry at the local Laundromat however this was not to be, on arrival at the premises I learned that the gypsies were in town and had ‘taken over’ the establishment as they were using every single washing machine and by the look of the ‘pure massive loads’ of bags and baskets full of clothes, the travelling people were not going to be finished anytime soon. Happy endings though as I phoned Veronique and asked if I could maybe come by her apartment and use her machine. Of course she said it was no problem, saving my life and looking out for me yet again as she always has done since I arrived in Holland.

Later that evening Samuel picked me up and we met up with the rest of the team at an awesome Dutch restaurant called The Boschwachter in the middle of the forest just south of Breda. The meal was excellent; a ham and cheesy salad dish for starters, chicken, veg and pasta for main and a coffee and shot of Cointreau with my friend Baptiste for dessert as well as whisky, beer and wine throughout the meal. Pretty descent scran likes.

Some of us decided to hit the town after dinner (of course) and we ended up in my favourite place, the rock bar, dancing and head banging the night away like crazy fools to the soundtrack of awesome rock anthems. A fantastic weekend.

Even though I don’t work Sundays, I received news that the plant had to shutdown again; an oil pump broke and oil was leaking everywhere apparently. Oh well…

Only a few weeks left to go now!

Chris x