Everyones Leaving

Most of the construction work on site is almost complete now and everyone is starting to leave.
Fred No 1 flew out on the 31st March, that's him on the right, some of the other sub-contractors are leaving in the next couple of days as well. Even the gold fish in the other office will be buggering off soon especially as he only lives in a Jam jar, the guys in there have named him Taco as in Mexican food, why they didn't name him Sushi is beyond me,we are in Japan after all.

Talking about food even the small canteens we have here will pull up sticks soon, actually they're not canteens really just sort of cabins that serve food which you take back to your office or cabin and eat, got to say they do a good job though. I use these quite a bit, my favorite is curried rice, yum yum, the other staple is stopping at the 7 Eleven on the way to work. You just got to love 7 - Elevens you can do all your banking there, pay bills, they serve great sandwiches and ready meals, sell drinks and booze what more can you want from one store. We're such good customers at the one on the way to work that everyone knows us, pity only the manager can speak English, I'm sure there profits will fall a bit when we leave. The manager's a nice guy though he's lived in the US for a while and his name's Arrie but when i say it always sounds like I'm trying to say Harry "Arry" apart from him no one else can speak English much but there again none of us can speak Japanese, apart from hello, goodbye, see you later that sort of thing.

Back to the site which is sort of going through a big transition at the moment with the emphasis going on to commissioning, in other words getting it all working. There's been a bit of a hiccup though, bit more than a hiccup really, the contractor who's been doing the acoustic installation has gone bust. Not sure if going bust is very common in Japan but it did cause a bit of a stir, right now they're trying to find a new acoustic installer, felt sorry for some of the guys though as i think they missed a months wages maybe even more.

I though having a contractor go but would be quite a loss of face over here but no one seems to have taken it to much to heart, actually the contractor went bust a good few weeks ago, just forgot to mention it before. It's taken about 4 weeks to go through all the legal winding up stuff and pick a new contractor, customer finally picked it's one of the contractors who've been working on site so they know all the history of what when wrong. I saw the quote or should i say the price, i think it was more than the original quote from the guys that went bust who seriously underestimated the work and it screwed them up. The new guys have have over estimated and it looks like they may make a killing no one else wanted to touch it though with a twenty foot barge pole, can't say i blame them. Talk about being over a barrel the customer did not have a lot of options, no one else wanted to touch it apart from for even more money so it was either shut up pay up and get it done the other option was don't pay and don't get it done, good job it's not our company paying, guess business is business where ever you are, got to make a penny or two as they say

The other thing that is changing is the weather, about bleeding time if you ask me but it was 20C the other day still a bit cold at night but getting there, guess we have the rainy season to come soon though, what joy. Photo on the right is of yours truly my mate Scott and some of the contractors that are leaving, well at least for now these guys have to come back later and finish a few things off.