Day 15
I went out to go on watch yesterday to find two ITs, the watch officer and the commo in a huddle outside. Huh oh. That’s probably bad. “Hey guys, what’s up?”
Obviously I can’t go into detail here but there were some problems that needed to be dealt with quickly and right. I joined the other two ITs in working to fix the problem. Got the off going IT out as quickly as I could and then continued to work the problem. When I finally had time to sit down and catch up on the more mundane aspects of my job – and look at a clock – three hours of my watch had gone by. Wow! That’s cool.
I think one of the big struggles for me in most jobs is that I really prefer to be fighting a fire than simply working a well defined process. I like walking into a situation that’s all a mess and trying to figure out how to get things working again. In my current position and with the guys that I work with, things aren’t likely to get very messed up very often. We have a good team of communications operators and electronic technicians. Things get fixed fast.
A few entries ago I talked about going into town to get my cell phone working. Well, for the past two days the main frustration of my life has been that my wife was not able to call me on my new cell phone. That, of course, was the main reason for getting a cell phone. So I was pretty bummed. Again, I was working on the issue today. Calling the cell service provider and asking for their help on the issue and feeling like I was getting no where. So, on the third phone call to Machiko as we were trying to work things out I was finally ready to give up and start looking for alternative methods of communication. Then Machiko asked a very important question.
“What’s your phone number?”
“I don’t know, let me look. It’s 555-3820.”
“Now I know why we’ve been having all these problems.”
“Why?”
“In your email you said your number was 555-3829.”
“Cool. Call me back!”
And everything worked just fine. Woo hoo!!
I have to credit Mobile Telecommunications Company. All but one of the people that I have dealt with at this company have been wonderfully helpful, even when struggling through a language barrier. The women that I’ve talked to in customer service have worked very hard to try and figure out my problem and have asked me to call them back if I do not get resolution. It’s been a wonderful experience and I highly recommend MTC eeZee to anyone coming to Kuwait.
Aloha