Oh My Gosh - It's Another Ingram Book!

Just in case this gets to be a long letter, knowing how SOME people don’t like long letters, here are the highlights. We’re still in China; our first unit was started up; Mona had her foot operated on; the following week, her father passed away; we flew back to Oklahoma for the funeral; I came back to China; she stayed with her mom for two weeks then flew home to Vancouver; I flew back to the US the following Thursday for Erin’s graduation from her MIM program on Saturday; we flew back to China the next day; Mona’s been back in the hospital; Mona & Sarah have become shopping guides; I’ve been working; the government stole our satellite dish; my cousins are coming in October for a whirlwind tour of China & Tibet. Now for those of you that have attention spans longer than that of a flea: We’re still here in beautiful Suzhou, China, and I mean that both literally and facetiously. It is called the “Venice of the East” because it has so many canals throughout the city and surrounding area. One difference is that in Venice, the canals are the streets, and here they are mainly for decoration & breeding mosquitoes. Originally, they were the primary means of transportation in this area, which is on the estuary of the Yangtze River. The bigger ones still carry a huge amount of boat and barge traffic; in fact you can take a boat from Beijing in the North, to Hangzhou, which is south of here, on the Grand Canal. Hand dug just so the Emperor to do just that. The locals tell us that when they were children, they would swim in the canals, but they are now so polluted that you can’t. The gardens here are fascinating and very pretty. The streets are kept very clean and but the rest of it can be trashy. Why drop it in a trashcan when you can simply drop it? Mona is getting to know a few more people all the time and is really not looking forward to leaving when the job is finished early next year. Mona has had problems with her foot for quite some time, and she finally decided that it was time to get it fixed. She thinks that it might have been an RSI (Repetitive Shopping Injury). There is a really good hospital in Shanghai that she felt comfortable enough to have the work done there. The surgery started out well. Mona had an epidural, which was working until she heard the bone saw. At that point she started telling them “Put me out! Put Me Out! PUT ME OUT!” So, they put her out and went back to work with their little hammers, saws & screw guns. They kept her overnight and she came back home July 16th with instructions to stay off of it and to stay on crutches for 6-weeks. She and Sally went shopping on the 19th. Sally had broken her leg back in April but has had problems with it and was still on crutches, but with a walking cast. Between them, they worked out this plan where they both hobble downstairs where Mona will wait with both pairs of crutches while Sally rides her electric-bike up to the front gate. There she parks and locks the bike, flags down a taxi, then goes back and picks up Mona and the crutches and they head out for their shopping fix. Coming home is much the same, but in reverse: drop Mona and all of the groceries off at the entry to the building; Sally taxis back to the front gate, gets on her bike and rides back to Mona who is guarding their crutches and grocery sacks. Now all they had to do is get all these sacks tied on to their crutches and make their way to the elevator and home. I wish I had a video of this adventure. On July 21st, Mona’s father passed away, so we flew back to the US for the funeral. Long day. If you count starting from midnight in China to the following midnight in Durant, our day was 37-hours long that included 26 hours of travel. Erik & Amy, Erin & Daniel and Dana flew in the following day. Only real problem was that Dana came in at 11 in the morning and the rest arrived at 11 that night. Two trips from Durant to Oklahoma City -- 300 miles round trip each time. But for someone who hadn’t driven in 4-months, it was kind of enjoyable. Had a hell of a time finding a place for all of us to stay. The bingo jackpot at the Indian Casino near Durant was up there and all of the hotel rooms were booked. Mona & Netta finally located some cabins out at the lake thanks to a tip from one of our cousins. Not too bad of a cabin if you were wanting someplace to stay while you were at the lake for a weekend with your trailer trash buddies, but not what you wanted to stay in if you weren’t at the lake for the weekend with your trailer trash buddies. All of Mona’s sisters and her brother were there, along with most of the grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great grandchildren. My parents drove down from Wichita. The service was very well done. The graveside service was held near where Houston was raised which was about 80-miles north of Durant on the following day. Dana had to get back home, so we took here over to the airport in Oklahoma City on the way to the latter service. Afterwards, we went back to OKC with two of Mona’s nieces and their kids for lunch at Panchos. Deciding to get rooms in OKC as the other kids had EARLY morning flights the next day. Took them to Will Rogers World Airport, and then went back to the hotel for a few more hours sleep. Back to Durant where Mona was going to stay for a couple of weeks to help her mom before heading up to Vancouver. I drove back to Dallas that night because I had a morning flight back to China the next day. Mona helped her Mom, brother and nephew due a little remodel job on their main bath and fix up some of her Dad’s pics and plaques. Work is still work; the Chinese are still Chinese. The original date for first fire (the initial operating of the unit) was the 5th of August, but the leader decided that he wanted it by July 25th in order to be earlier than the one of the other plants. Well, that plant leader moved THEIR first fire date up to July 15th, so our plant leader moved ours up to the 10th, so their leader moved his up to July 5th, so ours moved ours up to the 1st, then they said June 25th, so our leader promised his leader in Beijing that we would first fire on June 20th. Well, after many long 12 to 16-hours days, a whole bunch of short tempers, many meetings discussing (mainly me getting yelled at because we would not let them skip steps, do them half-assed or put them off until later), on August 3rd at 19:44, we rolled the unit to full speed-no load. But not before we embarrassed him in front of his leader. We had asked to be allowed to do a “pre-first fire” run the night before, but we were not allowed to because their leader had to be the one to push the button to start the unit. We argued that there were still gremlins that we wanted to nail down, but we were not allowed to roll the unit for testing. So, when the leader pushed the button: nothing happened. Nada. Zip. Zero. Now, you have to picture this in your mind. There are 16 control operators (whom all have a 4-year degree in power plant operations, three weeks of controls training at the GE training center in New York and a two week refresher course in China), 40 plant supervisors, etc., 10 of the owners’ people and their leaders in the control room. The GE people and commissioning group are in the back room sitting at their consoles, watching through the big windows when the button didn’t work. With all of the jumping around, hollering and waving of arms, you would have thought that someone had opened up the control room door and tossed in a hornets nest. Shortly after that, they all turned in mass and looked at us. Leader comes in and started screaming. Tommy calmly got up, walked into the control room, pushed his way through the crowd, pulled up the trip button, turned around, walked back to his console and sat back down without ever saying a word. OK, they get everything ready to go, push the button; the unit starts to roll up to about 900-rpm and then shuts itself down. Seems that when you have a gas turbine, you have to open the gas valve. Gas valve open; press the button; unit rolls up to 900-rom; we have gas, we have spark. Spark plus gas equals fire. Time to insert a brief description of how a gas turbine works. If you want to skip this section go to **. It’s really just a big jet engine strapped to the ground instead of under a wing. The turbine has four sections: an inlet, a compressor, a combustion section and an exhaust (real easy to remember: suck - squeeze - bang - blow.) Like a jet engine, it cannot start without outside help. In this case, we use the electricity from the grid to make the generator, which normally produces electricity, into a motor that then turns the turbine. The compressor squeezes the air into the combustion chambers where it is mixed with fuel and ignited. As the heated air expands, it passes through the turbine blades and out through the exhaust. Since all of this is on a single shaft, it becomes self-sustaining at about 900-rpm. **Back to the story. We roll up to 2100-rpm and the unit initiates an automatic fired shutdown. This time, we’ve got no smart-ass answer! After about an hour plus of looking, we discovered that the contractor did not have the time to wire up the exhaust fans in one of the turbine enclosures. This allowed the temperature to reach a point that triggered the shutdown. In order to fix this, we did not pull wires to the motors, no, we put a jumper across the sensor and open the doors to the enclosure! Button pushing time again. Leader sets down at the control console and presses the button. Nothing happens. Tommy calmly gets up again, walks into the control room, pushes his way through the crowd, presses the reset button, turns around and walks back to his console. So on the fifth try, it makes it to 3000-rpm and the leader has skillfully started up the unit! His has proudly given a gift of power to the people of China. Everyone’s happy, everyone leaves and we’re left trying to keep the damn thing running long enough to take vibration data before it beats the bearings to pieces. As with most new units, there is some residual or induced imbalance. When you have 496,200-pounds (that is 248.1 tons or 134,354 kilograms) turning round and round 50-times per second, this can cause you to have a little bit of vibration. We were at 7-mils (7/1000 of an inch, which is the thickness of a human hair) and that is the start of the alarm range, with the trip level at 10-mils. Brought the unit down to put in some balance weights, but when your firing temperature is in the neighborhood of 2000°F, and the steam is at 1000°F, it takes a while to cool down. On the 11th of August, I flew back to Vancouver to attend Erin’s graduation from her Masters of International Management program. Really proud of her and the support that Daniel has been to her to allow here to complete her studies. I know that it has been hard on both of them. Got to see three of the grandkids that were up visiting their mom. Only managed to have breakfast at Burgerville, but it was enjoyable. They are growing so fast. Not enough time to do much else, but managed to have lunch at Hula Boy’s, attend two grad parties, see a couple of people and have dinner with the kids. Didn’t get to barbecue or have a party or anything before we flew out the following Sunday. When we got back, Mona finally began to realize that she had spent way too much time up on her foot without using her crutches and was now going to pay for it. Then she managed to pick up some kind of a bug that kept her pretty much confined to the little room with the porcelain appliances. She was starting to get dehydrated, couldn’t keep anything in her, so she finally agreed to go to the hospital. Back to Shanghai and the United Family Hospital. They decided to keep her overnight to get her re-hydrated. Gave her an infusion (IV) with stuff in it and a shotgun approach of shots for taking care of little stomach bugs, be they viral, bacterial or food poisoning. She was pretty weak for about week and they never really did figure out what it was. But with the help of her friends and by easing backing into shopping mode, she managed to pull through. With as much time as she and Sally have spent there lately, I’m getting to wonder if they have a thing for one of the doctors or something. Not satisfied with just shopping anymore, Mona & Sarah have started hiring their own buses and guiding other expat tai-tais (wives) on shopping excursions to Pearl Town or Silk Town or Embroidery Town or any other kind of town specifically designed to separate tai-tai’s from their husbands money. It could turn into work if they are not careful! Got a call from Mona last Friday telling me that someone had repelled down from the roof and was taking our satellite dish away. Wasn’t just our dish, it was every dish on the three buildings that face the street. They were carefully numbering each dish then throwing them in to carts, all under the watchful eyes of the police. Talked to the real estate company--here they are more like a management company--and they started checking into things for us. We found a note taped to the door, which I took to work to be translated. Seems like someone decided to enforce Suzhou Regulation 129 about satellite dishes. Couldn’t figure out if it was because the Chinese are not supposed to have private satellite dishes or because it was not aesthetically pleasing to some official or someone figured to make money by selling them back to us. We were told that expats could own dishes, and had given our passports and the registration fee to the real estate company to get it registered. Now they are saying that the satellite that they registered was the cable that comes with each and every apartment of the entire 85-building complex that makes up Orchard Manors. As always, rules change. Don’t know the outcome of this yet, but if it turns out to be a shakedown, we have enough 7-RMB DVD’s to last well into next year. Not to mention, we know where we can buy more! Thought that I’d attached a few photos that we have taken that show some of the more interesting items that we have run across. Photo 01 - The resident censor removed this photo as "not fit for email publication." Photo 02 - We have a solar hot water heater. Do not let anyone tell you that they don’t make hot water. Converting from Celsius that makes it 198° F. 02 - Hot Water Heater Panel--That's Degrees C Photos 03 to 07 - One Sunday afternoon, we were watching the thunderstorm and decided to take a video of the intersection just below our balcony. Video is 11MB and even I would not try to send that big a file via email. But, if you can use your viewer program to flip through them quickly, you can see a small sample of what happens when traffic is very light. Then multiply by 5 for a normal midweek's traffic. 03 - Our Intersection 1 04 - Our Intersection 2 05 - Our Intersection 3: 06 - Our Intersection 4: 07 - Our Intersection 5 Photo 08 - This photo has two purposes. One, meet Fong. Fong is Mona’s ayi or housekeeper. Two, like the caption says, this is what many women wear when they ride their bikes. Getting a tan is a sign that you work outdoors and only lower classes of people work outdoors! So, one must avoid getting tanned at all costs. 08 - What the Well-Dressed Riders Wear Photo 09 & 10 - These are a couple of ‘paintings’ that Mona got out at Silk Town. What they actually are is silk embroidered to make a picture. These are just some that Mona liked representing the area around Suzhou. They are just medium quality. The high quality ones are hard to distinguish from a painting until you stop and look at it. Very impressive. 09 - Silk Painting 1 10 - Silk Painting 2 Photo 11 - Someone ask how big the pearls were in the photo we sent out before. Not as small as you might think. Five to seven millimeters, which is about ¼-inch, plus or minus. Most of the pearls in this size range actually come from China and then are sent to Japan where they are sorted, strung and marketed at a premium price. Correction--There are no black fresh water pearls, the only natural black pearls are found in saltwater clams. 11 - Small Basket of Pearls at Pearl Town Photo 12 - Sign seen in a store (taken with a cell phone camera, so forgive the quality) 12 - Caution Photo 13 - Sign found in an elevator. Elevator Card: Got to go and head to bed before this spills over onto another page. Everyone take care and keep in touch. Next installment on your time should be our vacation. Our cousins from Albuquerque are coming for the month of Oct. and we have a great trip planned to Beijing, Tibet, Chengdu to see the Panda Breeding Center, then on to Guilin for a cruise on the Li River and finish with a three-day cruise through the Three Rivers Gorge on the Yangtze River. Tom & Mona