The North East work adventure – Bagdogra Installation
Day 3
Post breakfast of sandwiches, omelette and cornflakes, we reached the air force base by 930 with Harish.
Left our food order at the army canteen for keeping lunch ready by 130pm. Worked till 130 and headed for lunch only to find the lunch “getting ready”. A full 30 min later hot food was served!
J was getting antsy as ever, waiting for the driver who had gone home for lunch
I dropped off the three at site and took the vehicle to Siliguri to meet the local ELGI dealer, Sandeep enterprises, and picked up vibration mounts and other small items.
Reached the hotel by 630 pm. And we then proceeded to walk to gaur nittan restaurant for dinner. Food was good albeit a little too peppery. Had some local sweet, rosogolla for dessert and topped it off with chai and called it a day.
Day 4 – final day
Got ready early. A light breakfast of puri bhai, poha, orange juice and head to the airforce gate. We packed 2 veg sandwiches too just as a plan b, instead of wasting time at lunch. Reached the gate by 930 am
The officer at the gate was an old guy today. Plus his network was down so he was doing everything manually. It took quite some time to get in, and we were finally in at 1045 am
Most of the with was done. Only the demo of equipment was left and the fixing of vice and grinder to the table.
Realised after much efforts that the vibration mounts were too big. Returned to Sandeep enterprises, getting them changed and coming back to 3 hours!! Lunch was 4-5 good day biscuits :).
The mounts fit perfectly and then came the problem of the hour meter
ELGI has supplied a hour meter along with the compressor but without any instructions how to fit it. Y also didn’t know as this was a new design change he wasn’t aware of it.
No phones available with us so couldn’t contact Ganesh or any ELGI people until Amit from Bel arrived and we could use his phone.
Also realised that the tee joints required for the next installation were still in Bangalore as they were supposed to come with the Mieco pumps that were promised to us a week ago !
After many calls to and from the office to Amit phone, finally the tee joints were sent by air to another of Bel contact in Dibrugarh.
I had given specific instruction to put my number under the guys name, but the office decided to put the resident Bel engineers number instead. :(.
The resident Engineer assigned for that site is on leave and the one assigned to replace him will arrive on Monday only.
Monday afternoon delivery has been promised, but if they try any of those numbers, and they are already in the airforce base, we will be unable to reach the courier.
The hour meter problem got solved by yogish after a little brain storming. And after a demo and double check on all products, we finally left the site at 7pm
The BEL officers were extremely helpful on this installation and I decided we needed to celebrate the first successful installation with drinks and dinner.
I asked them their choice of poison and they said black dog. At 1800 a bottle it was quite expensive, but I could not go back on my word. Picked up another bottle of captain Morgan and some snacks too.
Session started at 9 with additional starters from the hotel. I pre-ordered veg Biryani and finished my dinner before the drinks.
The BEL guys left my room at 1130 and it was Y,J and I . A few more whisky pegs later, J came back into reminiscent mode and spoke a lot about how he remembered everyone in the family. But the thoughts were quite incoherent as he kept apologising for hurting my feelings if he was out of line.
I had to practically push them out of the room by 1.15 am to get some much needed sleep. Tomorrow is the long train journey to Dibrugarh, and onto more adventures!
