Life on the Rails

[Savonarola]

Tallares and the EOTs

We had problems with the EOT Units as well as the repeaters.  While Luis Fernando and I were out in the field installing the repeaters; Bill and WD were at the FeNoCo locomotive shop ("Tallares" in Spanish.)  Tallares is an open warehouse with a number of side rooms separated from one another by cinder block walls and from the main room by metal bars.  It was hot in the little rooms, with no cross ventilation.  Even by Colombian standards it was sweltering.  "I sweated so much I looked like I had pissed my pants," said Bill after his first day there.

Bill had brought down a large chest of spare parts to repair the EOTs.  This was good, because there was an enormous EOT graveyard waiting for him when he got there.  He and WD had set up an in depth procedure to tell what was wrong.  There were multiple issues and multiple points of failure.  When we found one that couldn't be diagnosed he would call the manufacturer.  They must break all the time, because they could usually tell us what was wrong based on our over the phone description.  They had many detailed work arounds involving changing parts in the units or swapping components on the boards.  Bill finally had to tell the manufacturer, "Stop, I'm in the jungle here, not a lab."  We didn't have the equipment or the ability to do a number of the repairs they had recommended.

The EOTs are powered by a small turbine hooked to the trains brake line.  In order to simulate this in Tallares we had a cylinder of air under pressure.  We found one EOT that didn't have a plug on the outgoing air port.  WD had spent so much time in Colombia that he had gotten into the spirit of Colombian engineering.  He jammed a large metal pin in the outgoing port, hooked up the intake and turned on the air.  The pin shot out, fortunately not very far, because it was so heavy.

As they worked the FeNoCo employees would peek in to see what the gringos were up to; but they never stayed to learn anything.  Even when there were interpreters available they preferred to watch videos on their phones or hang about at the water cooler.  I had joined Bill and WD later to test out the EOTs radios.  I had a test device that I was charging; the workers unplugged me so they could charge their phones and continue watching videos.  That took precedence over our work.

Sometime all the FeNoCo employees would disappear.  The first day there they all left around lunch time, except the shop manager who came back in a soccer jersey.  This would be a problem soon, since our contract was ending and FeNoCo would have to take over.

Even if they weren't all that interested in working, the team did have a good deal of camaraderie.  It was someone's birthday when I was there, and they all got into the manager's office and sang "Happy birthday."  They had a congratulatory speech for the person whose birthday it was, and then they had cake and punch.  They even shared that with us, it was a chocolate cake with some sort of dried fruit I didn't recognize.

There were about 15 EOTs that couldn't be field repaired.  We sent them back to the manufacturer.  Bill asked what was wrong with them; and manufacturer told us they determined all of the problems were due to user abuse.  These units are supposed to be rugged enough to work out of doors on a train; they weren't being handled any rougher than their intended operation.

In order to be able to handle field repairs better we've made arrangements for the ET Solutions people to attend training at the manufacturer's facility.  None of them have ever been to the United States; and they assumed they'd be going to Melbourne, so they'd be able to spend some time in Miami.  The manufacturer is located in North Dakota.

"Oh, what's that like?" Luis Fernando asked me when he heard.

"Different from Miami," I replied.  He was from the mountains; at least, so he had experienced cold weather.  The other two were from the coast, depending when they go they might be in for a shock.

[Savonarola]

Social Media

There were three restaurants that we would go to in Santa Marta when we were celebrating major occasions.  The first was The Great Wall, a Chinese restaurant.  They had very sweet sauces, many curries and a lot of seafood; but WD didn't think it was any worse than our American Chinese restaurants.  In my hometown of Detroit it's not uncommon to receive sweet rolls at the start of a meal.  This is because that many of the Detroit's original Chinese immigrants had first lived in Hawaii before settling in Detroit.  Here in Santa Marta we got garlic toast at the start of the meal.  I wondered if the Chinese had first lived in Spain or Italy before settling in Latin America.

The second was a seafood restaurant called Dondechucho.  It's well known in Colombia, at the height of tourist season the restaurant is overflowing with Colombian tourists.  At those times tables there can have a two or three hour wait.  We had the luxury of being able to go in the off season.  The seafood is delicious and very fresh.

The third was Barakuka, which was set up on a hill overlooking the bay of Santa Marta.  It's the only place we found in the entire region that served steaks.  I thought they tasted rather gamey, but Bill liked them; consequently we almost always went to Barakuka for celebrations.

Service there could be painfully slow.  One night Vinicius, Kumar, their wives and Jeff went there.  Jeff and Vinicius had gotten their meals before the rest of them had gotten their drinks.  Vinicius's wife was most unhappy with that, and she let Vinicius know that quite definitively.  They never went back.

Service is frequently slower in Colombia than it is in the United States wherever you go.  It's not an uncommon practice in Colombia to deliver the food as it arrives from the kitchen rather than all at once.  The Hotel Jorlin has a restaurant, which on our route is the only restaurant which has air conditioning south of Santa Marta.  The food is decent, but the service can be spotty.  One time Kevin and Sofia were there with a large party.  Everyone else had finished their meals before Kevin and Sofia got theirs.  Sofia was not going to take that.  She complained to the manager and, unlike everyone else on our project who ever did that, she got results.  The manager offered her and Kevin a plastic carrying case that said "Hotel Jorlin."   She told the restaurant manager that wasn't enough, the rest of the team needed one as well; and the manager got one for everyone.

As in most other countries you have to flag down the waiter when you're done for the check.  Flavio, who was Brazilian, marveled at how, in the United States, they would just bring him a check and tell him that there was "No rush."  So he would just linger as he would have at a Brazilian restaurant.  We had to tell him what they really meant was "Pay up and get out."

Sofia and I went to Barakuka a couple nights before the last time we left Colombia.  There was a young couple sitting next to us.'

"And here they are at the most expensive restaurant in the city, with a bottle of wine and they've both dressed up and all they are doing is texting on their cell phones," said Sofia.

So the next generation of the smart set in urban Colombia is not that different from our own.  I agreed with Sofia.  I don't claim to understand all the things that young people do, but if I had a date built like his was I wouldn't have been staring at my cell phone all night.

For my own part I had to give up following social media when I was in Colombia.  It was surreal.  One day I was in the field watching people bathe in the Rio Frio; the same river they got their drinking water from, and they washed their clothes in.  I returned home that evening and found that one of my Facebook Friends of Asian extraction had her day ruined because someone, on first meeting her, had spoken loudly and slowly.  Every day it would be something like that; the third world by day, white people's problems in the evening.  I found it difficult not to be "That guy" and respond to every whine with what I had seen in the field that day.  So instead I deactivated my account.  I've never looked back.

[Savonarola]

Phones

GE has an official phone training that you must certify that you've taken before you can order a corporate phone.  If you actually do take the training (rather than just certify that you have) you'll find that GE strongly encourages you to get a free phone; however phones up to a $300 value don't require management approval.  Consequently everyone on the project had an iPhone 6.

Glen, after hiring on to GE, not only took the training, but actually read the phone policy.

"It's all about only using the phone for legitimate business reasons.  My question is, have you ever heard of anyone getting fired for misusing their phone?"

I said, "If they're going to fire you, they'll find a reason.  If it's not for watching Youtube videos on your phone it will be something else."

"Well, yeah, I know that, but have you ever heard of anyone getting disciplined for it?"

I told him I hadn't.  I also hadn't bothered to read the GE policy or take the training.

The problem with the corporate phones in Colombia is that, unless the caller had an international plan, they couldn't call you.  Sofia didn't get her company phone until after the project was over.  While we were in Colombia she would use her Colombian phone to call the drivers and then have them give their phone to me.

Glen got a pre-pay Colombian phone when he was a contractor.  He ran out of minutes, so he went to the Claro store get it charged.  He asked for a receipt, but they wouldn't give him one; they said their machine was down.  After he insisted they hand wrote out a receipt for him.  He thought this was fraud, so he had Sofia verify that minutes were charged.  He did have all the minutes he bought.  Dubious business practices are frequently not a red flag for fraud in Colombia.  That's just how the country works.

The Colombian phones were ancient and only allowed voice or text messages; but those ones lasted the longest.  Colombia was a rough environment about phones.  Bill went through 3 phones in his time on the project.  Being Bill, he actually ordered an iPhone 6s after his iPhone 6 broke.  That was something so expensive that it required his boss's approval.  He got it; and promptly dropped the phone on his first trip to Colombia.  He took it to a phone repair man who worked in an open booth in the city.

"He took it all apart with tweezers," Bill said.  "everything was so small it was like he was performing surgery."

Surgery exposed to the elements at that.  It seemed to work after Bill got it back; but he was always complaining about the performance afterwards.

My phone bill fluctuated quite a bit throughout the year.  I didn't think much of it; but Bill ran up a series of $2000 phone bills.  He got the nasty-gram from accounting.  They told him that he needed to get on an international plan.  Bill said he had one.  Accounting did some research and discovered our international plan doesn't cover Colombia.  Bill had been using his phone as a WiFi hot spot and everything, so his charges were huge.  Accounting apologized and Bill continued to rack up bills.

[Savonarola]

Love

When the project began Gary had been living with his girlfriend for about four years.  She had a son from a previous relationship that he was helping raise.  They seemed to have a good relationship, though his girlfriend was not happy with the amount of overseas work that Gary had.  Gary not only had the FeNoCo project but also some legacy systems to work on in South Africa and Australia.  His girlfriend kept referring to his work as a "Vacation."  Gary tried time and again to explain that visiting an iron mine or a coal port hardly qualified as a vacation, but it she remained unconvinced.

On his first trip to Colombia Gary had gotten sick by eating cheese from a roadside vendor.  He left Colombia the next day, and was still feeling queasy as he got home.  When he got there he found one of his cars missing and his girlfriend and her son were gone.  Gary asked his neighbors if they had seen her, and they said "Yes, she packed up and left a couple days ago."

She had realized that Gary was never going to marry her, so she had gone back to her parents in Kentucky.  Gary had to threaten to call the police in order get his car back.  Even then she wouldn't bring it back, he had to get a buddy to help him and spend an entire weekend to get his car.

To me the biggest downside to the project was spending so much time away from my wife.  This project wore hard on relationships and on families as the project went on longer and longer; well past its expected completion date.  Most people had it worse than I did; Jose and Max both have autistic children; their spouses had to do all the work alone while they were in Colombia.  Other people's wives were not so understanding.  Vinicius's wife wasn't happy Irotama, but she wasn't happy being left alone in São Paulo either.  She chewed him out about spending so much time in Colombia the day before he came home.

"It's like a lion," Sofia said.  "Before you go into the cage you have to throw her some meat in order to distract her."

"I got her some jewelry," said Vinicius.

Apparently that worked, since they're still together.  Vinicius has even volunteered to be the lead engineer for warranty work in Colombia; a position that would require that he lives in Santa Marta.  The economic situation in Brazil has deteriorated to the point that being paid in Colombian Pesos is a step up.

While things were difficult between Vinicius and his wife due to the project; they were much worse between Nick and his fiancée.  Every day she'd send him passive-aggressive texts about the length of time he was spending there.  We would be out at dinner and he'd have to keep typing away apologies on his phone.  She kept texting him things like "This can't keep happening," and "What are you going to do when we have children?"  She even threatened to leave him a couple times.  This was one reason that I kept going back to Colombia; I didn't want a failed engagement on my conscience.  Nick went way out of his way to avoid going back; one of my co-workers, Brian, told about a staff meeting they held when I was in Colombia.  Nick kept saying things like, "I think they can handle that down there," or "I really don't need to be there for that," and our boss kept saying, "No, I think you should make reservations."

WD is nearly in the opposite position of Nick.  WD works the same incredibly long hours back in Melbourne that he does in the field.  Sometimes when I work late at the office I see him out shooting hoops as a break before going back to work.  He's got a young son and a wife; how he stays married is a mystery to all of us.  Until January of this year his wife was still living in China.  When her visa to the United States finally came through he had to leave Colombia for an emergency trip home.

"I have to unpack," he said, in full panic.  He had lived in Florida for almost a year but as if a bachelor.  His wife is an interior decorator, she would have been livid if she had seen nothing but boxes upon coming to her new home.

Sofia has an unusual situation.  Her husband is teaches at international schools.  That is how they met; he was the principal of the American school in Colombia that Alejandra was attending.  Today he's in Sao Paolo as a principal.  They would go long periods without seeing one another; but, to Sofia's delight, he was going to end his contract early and come home shortly after the end of our project.  Like Vinicius, the currency collapse in Brazil had impacted him.  By the end of our project he would have made more money working at a Home Depot in the US.

One night, well after several giraffes at the Bogota Beer Company, Sofia said "You must be happy to go back to see your wife."  I told her I was; we were going home the next day.  "She might not be the tallest, or the most handsome or the richest, but she's the special one to you."

My wife always picked me up at the Orlando Airport whenever I returned.  The greatest moment of happiness I experienced on the project was seeing her car; and knowing that, at least for a while we would be together.  My wife took my being in Colombia well, as compared to several others, but it was still a hardship.  The heat and the frustrations of Colombia weren't difficult; but being apart from the special one to me was.

[Admiral Yi]

 

[KRonn]

 

[MadImmortalMan]

Gary should have ditched Miss Ungrateful and found a local girl in Colombia.

At least you and WD got lucky. 

[Savonarola]

Gary should have ditched Miss Ungrateful and found a local girl in Colombia.

At least you and WD got lucky. 

Gary did have an opportunity (I wrote about it in post # 56, "Ports.")  He ended up with a [Graham Parker]Local Girl[/Graham Parker] here in Melbourne instead.

And yes, I realize that I'm quite lucky.   

[Savonarola]

Bill

Of all of us, Bill had the most difficult home situation.  He has adopted two of his grandchildren, both have special needs.  He adopted them after his daughter-in-law had the children taken away from her.  While Bill's son was deployed in Afghanistan his wife hooked up with a man who had a history of abusing children.  In the course of their relationship both the man and the daughter-in-law abused Bill's grandchildren.  Frequently they were ignored; they would leave the children in their car for hours on end as they went to the bar.  Bill said that when the authorities recovered the car the back seat was filthy, strewn with dirty diapers.  Other time the boy (the eldest) was subject to abuse.  After a couple trips to the hospital, child protective services started to get suspicious.  They had been living in California at the time; she fled to Texas and claimed to their child protective services Bill and his wife were the abusers and she was fearful of them.

Then Bill got a call one night; his grandson was in a hospital in Texas and wasn't expected to live.  Bill and his wife went their immediately.  The abuse he suffered was horrific.  He had cigarette burns and had received a severe beating.  He survived, but was beaten so badly that he has permanent brain damage.

An enormous legal mess ensued.  Bill's son was simply overwhelmed by what had happened and ceded his parental rights to his parents.  The now ex-daughter-in-law is currently serving 14 years in prison.  The boyfriend had escaped initially, but was caught doing the same thing to another child again.  He's serving 44 years in prison.  Bill was called in for both these trials.  In addition he had to fight the children's other grandmother for sole custody.  That was granted after Bill was able to present evidence that she would have been in the location when some of the abuse occurred.

Bill and his wife had enough pensions and savings that they were planning to retire at age 55.  Now their savings have been drained by legal fees and medical expenses.  Bill is still at work at age 58.  His wife quit her job to look after the children full time.  Bill took it philosophically; "What would I be doing now if I was retired?  Every day is an adventure here."

Even when Bill is in Melbourne the situation is difficult.  Both children require therapy, the son needs it every day, the daughter once a week.  Our public schools aren't well funded, and Bill has to constantly go meet with the principal in order to get them to provide the services for special needs students that they're required to by law.  When he's in Colombia the situation is much worse; but Bill did his best to raise his children from there.  He talked with them over the over the iPad every day in the morning and in the evening.  Even when we were working thirds, he'd set up a session at six in the morning as exhausted as he was; and as unreliable as Colombia's data network is in rural areas. 

His granddaughter's problems are largely emotional; she can't express emotion and doesn't seem to feel love or empathy.  The psychologists she's seen believe this is because of the neglect she suffered as an infant.  Everything that she does feel is based upon need.  She turned nine while we were on the project so sight now she needs an iPhone.  In order to get her to behave, Bill gives her a point every day she's good; but every day she's bad she loses all her points.  Once she reaches 100 she'll get her iPhone; the highest she ever got was 12.

Even with Bill's efforts, his wife was left with the bulk of the work.  Near Easter he went back to America after two months in Colombia.  He spent his first several days at home fixing the things that had broken in his absence.  His first day back in the office was a hot day in Florida; his wife had mowed the lawn that day and was in a bad mood that night.

"But dear," Bill objected, "I finished your 'Honey-do' list this week."

"Don't you dare call it that," she said, furious, "Those are things you should have been here to do."

"Yes dear," Bill said meekly.  He mowed the lawn the rest of the time he was home.

[Malthus]

My lord, that's horrific. 

[Crazy_Ivan80]

My lord, that's horrific. 

[Savonarola]

The son is really messed up; he has to take medication for seizures, he has a hard time retaining information and he has no fine motor skills.  Bill told me that his penmanship was terrible.  I told him not to worry about it, when I was in grade school my handwriting was so terrible that I had to go talk to the principal about it many times (I went to a Catholic school.)  In his grandson's case, though, it's hard for him even to get the letters of a consistent size.

The daughter, well she's hardly the only heartless woman in the world.     Unfortunately his wife has a really hard time dealing with her.  Bill has a positive relationship with her; he's about the only person she trusts.  Bill said that, unfortunately, that means one day he's going to have to tell her the whole sordid tale; that the man she thought was her uncle is really her father and her mother is in prison.

Bill's taken this all really well, given that all his life plans were changed and he was left to deal with a horrible situation.  I realize that I may have portrayed him a something of a grouch, I've been with him on some really frustrating days, but Bill is the eternal optimist.  It's a little like working with a smurf, to him everything that can go right, will go right.  Of course that's not how Latin America works, nor is it how families work; hence his frustration.  Still he always bounced back after every disappointment; and that's what made him the perfect project manager for this project.

[KRonn]

Wow, those kids have been through horror. I give Bill and his wife huge credit for trying to do what's best for their grand kids. It's such a tough task they've taken on and I give them credit for doing it. It's terrible what was done to those kids. The daughter in law and boyfriend are two real nasty SOBs.

[Savonarola]

The End of the Project

We had a close out meeting for the project back in Melbourne in the middle of September.  I walked into the conference room, and thought "Who are you people?"  Until I saw WD I wasn't even sure I was in the right meeting.  Most of the work on the project was design, safety and software, people who were smart enough not to go to Colombia ever. 

By that point only five of us were going to Colombia regularly; Bill, Vinicius, WD, Sofia and I.  Early on I had thought of the project as "Lord of the Flies."  As the team thinned down to a small, loyal core, it became more like "The Heart of Darkness," with Bill as our Mr. Kurtz.  It was especially appropriate because we were essentially working for free at the end.  These unsound methods came about because FeNoCO refused to sign off on the project.  This was GE's final pay point.  They kept on finding petty issues to delay us, and we were there doing, what should have been warranty work, without FeNoCo paying GE.  At last we were held up because about a dozen rail ties were cracked; the new ones were on order and arrangements had been made to install them, and they still wouldn't sign.

We had held the meeting in Melbourne because we were given a hard date by GE to stop work.  They were going to close the project, with or without sign-off.  They were sending Kevin's boss's boss to announce this to FeNoCo.  There's only one reason that GE would send someone of that high rank (and that little familiarity with the project); he was going to tell FeNoCo we would be proceeding with legal action.

Before GE did that; upper management told Bill to tell the FeNoCo managers, "If you can't pay us; just tell us.  We can work with you, but telling us you can pay and not doing so messes up our financials."  When Bill said that, FeNoCo immediately fessed up that they couldn't pay us.  That was hardly a surprise; the price of coal had collapsed in the middle of the project.  GE switched flight schedules so that Kevin came down to close the project and the story went from GE not wanting to work projects in Colombia ever again to GE looking forward to a long partnership with FeNoCo.

Bill came down to Colombia on his final trip content and overflowing with optimism.  The 40 hour shifts he had worked in May had taken a serious toll on his health.  He had to take blood pressure medication twice a day and was under doctor's orders to get enough sleep.  Sofia would remind him every day at 7 AM and 7 PM to take his medication.  Bill would reminisce longingly for the days he could work forty hours straight and still be fine, the way WD does now.  Still he was in much better spirits than he had been throughout most of the project.

This slowly deteriorated over the two week period.  It started with me.  Bill had held a meeting to discuss issues we were having.  Meetings with Bill are never a short affair, and he and WD had gotten off on some tangent that wasn't related to the matter at hand, or even the current project.  I tried to steer them back, but Bill would have none of it and the thirty minute meeting lasted two hours anyway.  I thought nothing of it, but Sofia said that had started Bill into his bad mood.  He must have complained about me to her extensively.

Things went worse when Vinicius and Cesar both gave Bill a phone bill.  Vinicius still couldn't get a cash advance with his AMEX.  Cesar was a driver; they make so little that Bill had paid and then expensed their phone bills throughout the project.  They had both gotten 10,000 minutes, which Bill felt was too much considering we were only going to be on the project for a couple more days.  The bills were not for a lot, about 50,000 Pesos apiece (at the time about $15,) but Bill was running low on cash.  He had just bought a new phone screen and didn't want to have a fortune in phone expenses on his expense report.  He ranted about this a good deal and even refused to pay Cesar's bill.  (Sofia ended up paying it.)

Then we were having problems with the battery back up on power the crossings.  We had an insufficient number of batteries, so Bill had picked up a couple car batteries and had them delivered to Vinicius in the field.  The batteries didn't have the right connectors, so they had to be returned.  The plan was Bill was to go to Santa Marta, while Vinicius was to go to Bosconia, and Bill would exchange the batteries and have them sent down.  There wasn't anything Vinicius could do in Bosconia without the batteries, but Bill was already mad at him over the phone bill so he went to the crossing and waited.  Then, as usual, a meeting ran late and Bill didn't get the batteries.  At one in the afternoon he called Sofia and had her pick them up.

For some time Bill had been getting annoyed at Sofia because she had avoided going to work in the field.  Almost all her work could be done in either Prado Plaza or at Irotama, so there wasn't a reason for her to go to the field; but Bill wasn't happy about this.  Throughout most of the project Sofia had been his sidekick, so having her no longer around bothered him.  Sending her to get the batteries was his attempt to force her out of Irotama.  She only went to the battery shop and back to Irotama, and sent the driver down to Bosconia on his own.  There was no reason for Sofia to spend six hours in the car just to be an errand girl; but her not going annoyed Bill even further.  Vinicius didn't get his batteries until five o'clock, and had wasted his whole day.

On one of the last day there we were at Tallares repairing the EOTs.  Bill showed up and asked where lunch was.  We didn't know what he was talking about; they didn't serve lunch at the locomotive shop.  He had told Sofia to order lunch and have a driver bring it; we didn't know that and had no lunch.  He called Sofia and, when he found that lunch wasn't on order, started yelling at her over the phone.  Later he sent an e-mail detailing everything that she was doing wrong and for the rest of the project he complained about her.  They weren't speaking to each other by the end.  I had to deliver messages between them, like a child of a divorce.

Bill, WD and Vinicius went home on the first of October.  Sofia and I had agreed to stay a couple extra days in order to install repeaters.  We had ordered six more, and had them delivered with the help of expediters.  They had reached the port of Santa Marta on Monday and were supposed to be released on Wednesday; and then on Thursday; and then on Friday; and then we started getting questions.  We were asked by the expediters about the purpose of the equipment.  Then we were asked about its compliance to regulation.  Then we were asked about its value.  These were all things the expediter should have known beforehand.  By Saturday I called it, and let Luis Fernando know where everything was installed.  We returned home and the repeaters weren't released until a week and a half later.  While we were waiting for our repeaters to be released Drummond had gotten two full locomotives through customs in two days.  Bill vowed never to use expediters again.

[KRonn]

Heh, finally the project is over? Will you need to go back for maintenance or trouble shooting? I guess if you again need to ship in network equipment, stash it inside a locomotive and ship that.