I officially had one of the unluckiest work week of the year. I can't believe I'm having muscle aches from work and not from some kind of exercise. As such, if the design of the blog changed the tomorrow, you would know what I've done on Christmas; else I should probably be heading out soon.
This is the season to be jolly, fa la la la la~! La la la la~!
Disclaimer: I'm going to whine like fuck
18/12 (Thu) : Finally back for good from my long break. But because I'm currently in the active unit I could be activated any time and the tanks we're in charge of
cannot be down for more than a day. Firstly, I was changing out the batteries for our own tank.
Whoever the fuck took them out the previous day didn't label the wires. Got a diagram from a dude and fixed according to it. When it came down to the last 2 wires, I realized that the diagram is
fucking wrong. You think, "
It's just batteries what! How hard can it be?"
Eh, fuck you understand.
There's 4 of them, each weighing up to 39kg each. We have to lift it up to a height of >2.0m, then lower it down, and slot it in within a confined space where you have to squat in a fucked up position and have to use strength. Not to mention that it's dark inside and a torchlight is mildly helpful at best. (
because it was raining it is really fucking dark)
When I figured out that the diagram was wrong and was going to rectify it, got activated to help out with the vehicles that cannot be down (
which will henceforth be known as FSV [fucking suay vehicle] ).
Some guys where doing servicing for the FSV and it was down to the transmission filter which is the most fucked up design you will ever meet. The person who design this should really just shoot himself in the head. It's hard to explain/describe the process but just know that you need a combination of strength, finesse, patience and endurance to replace the filter. Oh and also tolerance for pain/itch as the tiny fibre glass fragments will get embed in your skin as you rub against the exhaust pipes.
In the end, it was done after working overtime.
19/12 (Fri) : Nope. turns out that the transmission filter thing that we did yesterday leaked. Luckily, it wasn't due to me. Unfortunately, I have to fix it. I wouldn't blame anyone for it as it's really just fucking bad luck that such a thing happened. I then got briefed that it was cross threading that caused it to leak.
What's cross thread? The hole that a screw goes in has threading right? The threading in the hole got crossed, so it's fucked up and the screw can't go in fully.
Why is this a bad thing? Because the fucking transmission costs $500,000. We tried rethreading the hole which is a really high level task and no one ever did that for a transmission before. It didn't come as a surprise when we just flat out failed and gave up. Due to certain requirements, we had no choice but to swap the FSV for one of our own vehicles.
All these took an entire day so it speaks to how difficult it was. Oh yes I forgot to mention, I was down with flu, as well as yesterday.
20/12 (Sat) : Because my flu didn't get better I missed my friend's dance performance. Sigh.
21/12 (Sun) : City Harvest. I shall keep the rest of the comments to myself. Relieved stress today even though I had to go back to camp at night.
22/12 (Mon) : Had some talk in the first half of the day. The only thing I've learnt from it was,
卖靠北，靠自己
(
first part in hokkien, go figure)
The next half of the day was bowling but guess what, I couldn't go for it due to guard duty. It isn't that bad, except that the system totally changed and we got blind-sided by it. Not to mention the uncountable dogs roaming our camp, barking/charging at us randomly.
23/12 (Tue) : Guard rest is until 10am. When I woke up at 940 I saw the message on my phone saying that my boss extended mine and J's rest until 12. I thought, "
Fuck yes!". It's just second later that he turned my smile upside down. Apparently we have to swap engines. It's as hard as it sounds, too troublesome to elaborate any more on it.
We are swapping out the engine for the FSV as we need to put it back into service as fast as possible. So we used a working tank in our arsenal and cannibalized it. We had half a day to do the swap, which means preparing our own tank, and the FSV for the swap, removing the FSV's engine, and putting in the other engine, reconnect everything and put on the top deck.
It's doable, and we did it by 5+pm. But guess what, one of the connectors from the fuel line broke.
So... fuck it. We leave it for tomorrow.
24/12 (Wed) : Early in the morning we got scolded by the boss of my boss for leaving the FSV out of it's designated area. Like, "
why didn't you finish it yesterday?". LIKE WE DIDN'T WANT TO. Son of a mother bitch only know how to cover his own backside.
Today is Christmas eve so it's half day.
We've had until 12 to complete our task (roughly 3+ hours). Which means lifting the top deck, replacing the broken connector from the fuel supply line (
something no one did before), put back the top deck, reconnect up and be done with it.
We did it by 11:10. Everyone heaved a sigh of relieve and gave a half assed cheer as we packed up the area and prepared to get the hell out of this place.
20 mins later, we got activated yet again. Apparently they closed the ramp door with human strength while the engine wasn't installed, so the cable isn't properly tensioned. I did not know about this as I wasn't there when they did it. My boss wasn't around due to his grandma's funeral, he forgot to mention it and my 2IC also forgot about it.
The moment some dude unlocked the ramp catch, the door just fucking fell to the ground, breaking the steel cable and linkages around it.
Sigh.
Fortunately nobody was near it or someone could've died. I'm not sure how heavy the ramp door is, it was attached to a hinge and it took 8 men to lift it.
The steel cable looked like it freaking exploded, the ends were frayed and it looks like fireworks. Here's the kicker though, we can't leave it alone. It must be fixed by today no matter what. So... for better or for worse, I stayed back along with 2 other guys. Let's just say that this is another task that no one had done before. I mean, we could roughly tell what steps needed to be done based on experience
but no one had done it.
Hence began the overtime when we fumbled around with the mechanism figuring out how it worked, how to remove and replace it. We wasted more than an hour finding a replacement part some dude tell us we definitely had,
we couldn't find it. So we resorted to cannibalizing
our own working vehicle yet again.
By the time we removed both tank's ramp cable mechanism it was about 330pm.
It then rained.
We had a choice, wait, and waste time;
or do it now, in the rain. We chose the latter. The rain got heavier and heavier until it became a downpour; though we tried our best to work within the tank, we still got drenched.
It was until the last part, where we had to connect the cable to the ramp door that we realized a fatal lack of foresight. We didn't have enough people. There's no way we can lift it up with just 3 people. Well, 2 because one needs to attach the cable. I had to go and ask favours from some guys doing their duty. Managed to get 3 more,
turns out 5 men isn't enough. We managed to lift it with roughly 8, honestly though I didn't bother counting but, eh~
Being the man tasked with connecting the cable, I had a mini panic attack when I couldn't slot the bolt through, because everyone else is withstanding the weight of the ramp door while I fumbled around and tried hammering it in with my fist. As it turns out, my fist is not a hammer, it took me 5 seconds to realize my futile efforts and quickly grab a hammer somewhere around me and started pounding it like a mad man until it went in. And trust me, 5 seconds is a really long time when you're holding that piece of shit.
By the time I reached home, it was 730pm. Which means I missed out on the guys' meet up at 630 and honestly I was really too tired to go.
25/12 (Thu) : Today.
All that explains my lack of enthusiasm in going out today. We'll see.
Regardless, Merry fucking Christmas guys.
Labels: army, christmas, featured, historical, life, lordofgeeks, rant
