So You’re Saying There’s A Chance?
Monday, September 28th, 2009Hello again, and welcome back to the tragic situation I call Jio Kou River Town. I’m going to have to make this post a bit short, but rest assured, I’ll make another post by Tuesday. I realize you guys can’t go too long without me rambling on and on about how much I hate this place,…blah,blah,blah, but you’re just going to have to suck it up and listen, or just click the X on the top right hand corner of your screen.
Like I said last week, a big Chinese holiday is coming up. Actually, it’s two holidays rolled into one. China national day, the celebration of the start of communism in 1949, is October 1 and the moon festival is right after. I’m not even sure what that is, and I’m guessing most Chinese don’t really either. The only thing they’re sure of is that
they get a week off of work, free moon pies, a free bag of rice, and a free jug of oil. I’m not even trying to figure out why, but apparently the thought of all that free stuff excites the hell out of them. I caught a quick picture of a couple of guys returning from the refinery with their free goodies. Actually, if my company were to give me free Lucky Charms and milk, I’d be pretty stoked too.
Regardless, the refinery managers finally realized that they couldn’t get enough feed for my wife and her colleagues to conduct the performance test (the reason we’ve been screwing around here for six weeks), and finally realized that they’d be paying for them to stay here during the holidays and WOW,…a light went off in their head. Just FYI,…they pay approx. $1700 a day for my wife and three other employees to be here….that’s $6800 a day multiplied by a six day work week and they’ve paid out $244,800 for the six weeks we’ve been here waiting to do the performance test. Good thing oil really is “Black Gold”. Now, not all of that time was lost, but damn, come on guys….roughly a quarter of a million later you realize you’re not going have enough feed (fuel) to run the unit at 100% for a three day test…(something’s not clicking up there).
So, on Friday the refinery boss told my wife to get out of here that they’d sign the performance test waiver and we could go. MAN, you couldn’t believe how stoked I was, I almost punched a hole in the door in celebration. BUT,…didn’t guess that was coming huh? The managers came in at the end of Friday and told my wife they only wanted a temporary release instead,…someone is trying to find loopholes in the contract. That means we still may leave but some point in the future some unlucky soul will have to come here and conduct the performance test; however, considering the fact that they can’t get their act together here, it may not happen. But, my wife’s legal dept. if putting together another “temporary release contract” so we’re still stuck here…but hopefully not for long. I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel; and maybe I can get out of here before my mind is completely gone.
Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.
– Mark Twain
the middle of September.
celebrate now. I can’t say I’ll give it too much thought, because I don’t feel like wasting the mental energy, I’ll need it trying to figure out the key mandarin phrases I’ll need to get out. The fact is, it provides me with ample time and distraction to scurry out. Notice the giant picture of me (the stress is getting to me huh?)…..my goal is to either: 1) use the U.S. passport and leave via any international airport but forego detection from the microchip inside my passport 2) use the Russian passport to go north through Mongolia and into Russia, or south and enter through communist Laos or Vietnam, undetected via land crossings. From there I can traverse south via the Mekong river, (of course always keeping a keen out for “Charlie” in the trees,…my apologies if that offended anyone). 
comrade and traveling companion only has one passport which limits my options. I don’t even want to think what my wife would say about my “great escape,” I believe it’s within my best interests to remain put, (Hell hath no fury like that of a woman’s scorn) maybe I should revisit my teachings on strategic planning.
which should be very interesting since we have a lot of students from all over the place. Other than that, I’ve just been getting some information together about my future research projects, which will be due soon enough. I’d better get Sancho, my research assistant, to update my calendar. 
from, has varying amounts of impurities, including sulfur. Refineries try to remove these impurities through different processes and the removal of such impurities is then burnt off, instead of being released into the atmosphere. The flare you normally associate with refineries is the burning off process. If a refinery pushes too much of the impurities out too fast, not all of it will be burnt off and some does get pumped into the atmosphere. In our case, my wife and I have been wondering what this weird smell is coming into our room for the past two days. She went outside today and realized what it was and just how bad it was, of course, the Chinese neither confirm nor deny, that sulfur dioxide was being pumped into the atmosphere. (not all of it was being burnt off) 
produce……you got it…Sulfuric Acid (aka Acid Rain). So, not only do we get to breathe in this crap, but it’s raining sulfuric acid,(but at least we get the pure stuff,..straight out of the tap) and as I said in the first paragraph, it’s been raining all week. I’ll definitely think twice about looking up while it’s raining, and escaping this town on an inflatable air mattress is definitely out of the question now.
