On work

I managed to catch a Monday morning bus back to Singapore after missing my Sunday night bus back. Needless to say, I have to apply for leave to clean up the timekeeping records.

Began the day like any other, with a sachet of Nestle mixed with 1/2 a stick of Regular strength Nescafe. I find this mix to be just nice, as it gives me just enough jolt to start the day.

I remember during the first few months here, I would get to the office and collapse to sleep on the table until the bell rings at 7.30am (yes, just like High School!) then crawl back up and start my day. Then during lunchtime, I would get so sleepy and fall back to sleep till 1pm when the bell rings again (again, just like High School!).

Nowadays, powered by my meager 1/2 stick of Regular Nescafe, I can come in to work at 7am and start the day with a hot cup of drinks as I catch up on the emails. I have been away for about 5 days now, and my mailbox is bursting already. Thankfully not everything is directed at me, some are just general notices. I missed out a meeting Monday morning, would have liked to attend it. It's interesting to see the engineers working out on a problem.

During meetings, everybody have a penchant of bringing together a notebook and a pen, in case they need to write down something. So far, I have yet to see anybody open up their books to write in stuff though. Maybe some of the meetings are really boring to them? Who knows..it's just my observation.

Today I got tasked to do a test memo on Low Pressure Mud System. I've not touched the drilling stuff yet, so this is the first time. Basically they have an elaborate set of pumps and connecting pipes to make sure that the mud is constantly circulated around from the mud pits so that it doesn't stagnate and set. They also need to constantly mix the mud around as the chemical composition of the mud can change over time, either from interaction with the borehole or when we add some additives into the mud. So for everything to stay homogenized, we have what is essentially a huge blender to churn things along.

Then the whole system patches to the high pressure mud system via charging pumps, whose purpose is to pressurize the mud and send them off to humongous mud pumps that will pump it down the borehole. Hmm, that's a lot of pumps. I haven't learn into detail about pumps in my course, but when I am here, since everything is about pumps, I have to study it on my own. Its one of those moments where I am lucky to have taken STPM because that shit is TOUGH and really makes you realize the importance of self study. Back in my high school, we basically didn't have a physics teacher, which kinda sucks as I am in the physics stream, so we organize study sessions and helped each other out. Good times. Because of that experience (and I did pretty well too, A- for Physics), it gave me the strength to understand that you are limited only by your willpower and how willing you are to put yourself through stress and misery to get what you want. Anybody can pay for a good tuition teacher.

So anyway, back to the story, I have looked at the diagrams for the system, hopefully tomorrow can start writing out the test memo. It also occurred to me that I have yet to submit my report for last month. We are supposed to write monthly reports for Keppel's Training department, and I realize it might be overdue. Strange, usually they will send us an email to remind us on the submission date. Maybe they're testing us? =P