Burning The Midnight Oil (Happy New Year)

It's New Year's Eve. I'll be giving 2011 the nod at a braai* at a friend's place in the suburbs of the good old Mother City.
 

So many people take this night for granted. To be able to celebrate with loved ones at their side until they salute the sun as it dawns on a new year; to laze around the next day recovering from the night before.

Engineers are in the group of people who routinely work during the holidays. One may argue that you're not a real engineer if you've never worked on Christmas, Easter or New Year's. It's usually the only time that plants shut down long enough for major maintenance or installations to happen. And someone's got to do it, and get the place running again in time for the first production of the new year; Engineers are always at the helm of it.

I was lucky enough to only have to work through the holidays once; I guess I wasn't a real engineer for very long. A few years back I returned to work in Boksburg straight after Christmas. Two projects of mine were being completed and the equipment was finally being installed over Christmas break. I was the process engineer on the team and had to hang around until the end for the wet commissioning and start-up. With the ever-tightening project schedule, and the ever-dwindling laundry powder stocks, we commissioned on New Year's Day. The installation team called it quits at noon on New Year's Eve so at least we could all have our low key celebrations. And we found ourselves back at the plant the next day when half the nation was probably still sobering up and making their way home from the night before.

There were engineers on the maintenance team who were doing this for the tenth year or more. They did the same during Easter break and somehow their families had just adjusted. It wasn't that bad. It felt good to work on something so important that I had to sacrifice my New Year's, my holidays... but I didn't want to do it again.

This year my boyfriend, an emergency room doctor, was working at a private hospital in Gauteng** throughout January,  starting on 1 Jan at 8am. He caught a flight at midday on New Year's Eve; midnight ticked past with him asleep at a guesthouse in Vereeniging, a small town that exists mainly to house the brains and workforce behind the nearby steel and petrochemical plants. We had a faux New Year's Eve "party" on New Year's Eve-Eve.

Of course he was working at his regular post that night so we had it in the Casualty Doctors' tea room at a hospital in Manenburg on the Cape Flats. At 23:30 I was still sitting at the Doctors' table in the middle of the emergency ward.  While he and his colleagues worked, I  watched a drunk patient get tangled in his drip as he tried to disembark his gurney. We had a  New Year's kiss at faux New Year's midnight in the tea room, popped our faux bubbly with his two colleagues and ate our finger-food: they returned to work and I went home.

I spent the real New Year's Eve with family but it wasn't the same. The first New Year's Eve in ten years that we'd spent apart. I didn't even get to call him at midnight.

So tonight I will toast to all the people keeping society afloat while the rest of us party like it's 1999: the doctors, nurses, policemen, firemen, engineers, waiters, petrol attendants and Engen-Woolies cashiers... Even the accountants slaving away to close their books for year end.

Happy New Year everyone!!

*"braai" is a South African colloquialism for barbeque
** Gauteng (meaning "Place of Gold") is one of nine provinces of South Africa; the economic hub and home to the City of Johannesburg

Images:
New Year's Eve Ann Miller

Carnivals and Car Parks

It's been about two weeks since my office Christmas party with The Bank. (Are we allowed to call it "Christmas party" anymore?) This year we had it at a Portuguese restaurant at a well-known, trendy casino complex in Johannesburg. Last year it was at a fancy steak-house in a newer, lesser known but no less trendy casino-complex. It just struck me today how these parties are worlds away from those I endured before I left Manufacturing.

The first year was the probably the worst. I was still in Durban, working at a soap and hygiene products factory. I had heard from my head office counterparts on the grad program that they would be attending a Rio Carnivale-themed party at the Durban ICC. At first I waited patiently for an invite. Then it dawned on me that the Wharf Rats (that's what factory people were "affectionately" nicknamed since the plant was at the harbour) were not en route to Rio. Fair enough. Maybe the factory team would have a kick-ass party of our own?

 

 A few days later the invite arrived in my inbox. The glamorous venue?  The factory car park. The dream theme? Mid-day humidity. I kid you not. I almost changed my flight to leave for Cape Town before the damn thing. The organisers tried to make it suave. A marquee, some draping, table decor. But come on! The car park? In Durban Summer heat no less! And in his speech, the factory manager put the cherry on top my slamming my team (factory planning) for nearly jeopardising his efficiencies (with our insistence that they stop producing stuff that was already overstocked!).

A year later and I had moved  and was looking forward to a better party at the Boksburg washing powder plant. I'd heard of the legendary, rocking year-end parties... Great venues, big budget, partners welcome, dinner, dancing, drinking!

As it turns out a new factory manager had relocated there just before I had. 

An accountant. 

I'm not saying she was to blame for it, but guess where we had our Christmas party that year? No, not a marquee in the car park. They wouldn't dream of that! No... 

But they would sadden my reality with a marquee in the big powder-covered field at the back of the plant. Known as the "North Yard", it was basically a storage area for waste bins, scrapped equipment and bags of powder waiting to be re-worked. Oh and it was adjacent to the effluent-overflow dam. Glam, glam, glam, yes? 

And I can only assume this new tradition served the budget targets so well that it stuck year after year with the only change being the ever deteriorating menu and decor. In fact the year before I left for the margarine plant next door we waited about forty-five minutes for our food, eventually queued up to collect our Nando's quarter chicken and Coke and ate at tables covered with newspaper. The pages on my table happened to be the Vacancies section. 

Subtle sign from the gods? I thought so. That was my last Christmas party with that team!

MB-Eish Part 4: Deadline Detox

**"Eish" is a South African slang term expressing surprise, dismay, anger or frustration.**

As I mentioned last year, I have joined the droves of engineers who have sold out to the dark side: Banking. To make myself more comfortable in my new, murky surrounds I have decided to do an MBA part-time. This is the fourth in a series of posts about my MBA experience.

Firstly, allow me to apologize (yet again) for breaking my promise to blog regularly. I have committed the cardinal blogging sin of letting life get in the way instead of letting it be material. Unfortunately between work, business travel, MBA and all the rest I have been mentally curled into the foetal position just trying to get by with my sanity intact. And I was afraid that blogging would draw my attention to just how crazy things were.

A few days ago I handed in my last MBA assignment for the year. All through the last two months of finals, mid-terms, assignments and work deadlines I have been dreaming of that day. Deadline free! I've been daydreaming of all the books I could read, the movies I could watch, the shopping I could do, the decor projects I could finish, the days at the beach, the guilt-free time with friends through out the Summer.... and four days into this bliss...

...I'm bored out of my freaking skull!!

No deadlines, no drama, no adrenaline, no reason to stay up into the wee hours, no post-exam or post-hand-in rush! Just free time. Endless amounts of time. I find myself flipping through the TV channels aimlessly, uninspired to do any of the things I have been fantasizing about during the many hours of procrastinating that I've indulged in since September.

I've realised that I must be suffering from a rare workaholic disorder which I have dubbed: DDD

Deadline Detox Depression.

Symptoms include staring at the walls for hours, walking aimlessly around your living room in slippers and losing interest in activities that you normally enjoy while practicing work-avoidance behaviour.

And with Christmas, New Year and summer holidays looming there is not a deadline fix in sight!! How am I going to survive all this lying around?

                           Dear Santa


                           Please can I have a purpose for Christmas? 
                           I've been really nice, I swear.


                           Yours in hope,
                           Femgineer