Five days a week

I don't think I'v written a blog since we were on holiday because I have been busy working again like everyone else. Claire has done a sterling job holding the fort as she still has plenty of time.

Starting back to work so abruptly was a bit of a shock to the system being told on Monday afternoon that I should start on Tuesday didn’t leave much time to tie up any loose ends. When I started I found out why I had to start in such a hurry. I wasn’t their first choice, which is understandable when I haven’t done any similar work for at least 8 years. Their first choice didn’t turn up on the Monday so that’s why I got the phone call but the trouble was that the guy that interviewed me on the phone was on holiday for a week so he had left instructions with his engineering manager that I was second in line. When I arrived on Tuesday morning I met Alex, the Engineering manager who is Russian which I think is unusual in England. Trouble was that Alex was already looking after Steve, the other guy that was starting at the same time so he handed me over to Martin, another contractor that had only been there for 3 or 4 weeks. It was from Martin that I found out that the other guy hadn’t turned in the previous day. It was all starting to look a little unprofessional and confused. The desk that I was given had a computer without any software on it so I had to install all the relevant software that I needed. I kept getting dodgy messages which said that the hard disk was about to fall down and programs frequently crashed out. As you can see from the photograph of my desk, it is used by another employee who seems to turn in around 2pm some days and work until about 9pm in the evening. It is in a bit of a mess, as is the rest of the office which is normally full up but I took these pictures early one morning.

The reason that OpTek (www.opteksystems.com )is a little chaotic became clear when I found out that there are only 10 permanent employees, the other 10 or 11 are all contractors like me, most of which have only recently started. Even Alex, the Engineering manager is another contractor working for the same agent as me. He has been there for a while though, over a year I gather. Alex commutes from London everyday; in fact there are at least 3 other contractors that live in London but they stay over in the week, as does Martin who lives in Nottingham. OpTek have had so much work come in at the same time that they are really struggling to handle it all especially as its holiday time and lots of staff are away each week. I am working on a new machine that must be designed, built and tested ready for an exhibition on 15th September where it will be launched. It is a new concept so has to be proved before it appears at the show which puts the pressure on even more. I get the feeling that this exhibition, if successful will provide OpTek with even more work. A Chinese company has found out about the machine already somehow and has already ordered two machines before they have seen them. For this reason we have to order 3 of everything even for the prototype so that we can get on with them as soon as the first one is finished. The machine should cut fibre optic fibres cleanly using a carbon dioxide laser operating at 20kHz. The usual way of cutting these fibres is using a scribed line, breaking the fibre and polishing the ends similar to glass cutting. Trouble is this leaves considerable a polishing exercise and to get good quality ends requires 4 operations of polishing each taking around 10 minutes. This machine should eliminate 3 of these polishing operations leaving only the final fine polishing operation and is being designed to have a cycle time of 4 seconds. Any company that has lots of optical fibres to terminate should benefit hugely by this machine once proved. Lots of other similar projects are going on at the same time and there are not enough hours in the day for people working at OpTek. It’s not their fault that they are becoming successful so quickly and they are a very nice bunch of people. I enjoy working there, like the people, I can definitely appreciate the income but the only thing wrong for me is the travelling. Claire has helped as much as she can and even comes to stay a night as often as practical which really does help me giving me a break between journeys. Claire is coming down for my birthday tomorrow and I hope to finish around 2pm making the hours up today and later in the week. It might even be worth looking for a room that we can stay in whenever we want rather than paying for hotel rooms a night at a time. I couldn’t resist putting this photo of Claire making herself look beautiful for me last week when she came down.

Abingdon is a very pretty little town and we managed to have a quick walk along the Thames last week. Where we have had lunch twice so far is the Nags Head which is on Nags head Island where the bridge is also. The Thames splits into two for about half a mile leaving a river island where we went for a walk. I think that the pub was named after the island rather than the other way around as the island is roughly shaped like a Nags head. However, I wonder why all the other pubs with the same name got their names.

Steve B has been coming out with us on a Wednesday night the last two weeks but starts his new contract in London this week so not sure if he will make it this week. Good luck Steve, I hope your journey is better than mine. Here we are having a quick one before we went out last week.

We received a claim form for a court hearing at Sheffield County Court regarding a traffic accident that happened on 20 July 2009 in Northampton. The claim was addressed to our company, Tristar Technical Services UK Ltd and it referenced a car and registration that we didn’t recognise. The document issue date was 5th August 2010 but we didn’t receive it until 12th August and we have to respond within 14 days otherwise they assume that we accept responsibility for the accident and a judgement will be made against us. That means that it had to be back by 19th August which was on Thursday effectively leaving us only 5 working days to sort it out. I have no reception at work for my mobile so I was forced to sort it out on a day off. It’s all very odd as we don’t even have a car registered to the company, the government tax incentives have made it better to own a car personally these days. I rang the solicitor at 9am but the person that I needed to talk to was on the phone and they promised to ring me back. They didn’t so I rang again at 10.45 and again, they promised to ring back. Again they didn’t so I rang back at 1.45 and was put on hold for 10 minutes and eventually got to speak to someone called Adam. To cut a very long story short they had filed the claim against the wrong company called Tristar Technical Services; a non-limited company. It’s a good job we weren’t away on holiday or we would have come back to a fine. Nice of the solicitor to phone me back when they had realized their error; I don’t think they were ever going to ring me back.

This last picture is of Harriet and her cousin who she went to see last weekend in Jersey where she lives and took our camera to record her visit. I think she had a bit of a hangover the next day but you are only young once.