We had one set-back after another with our crane building project in Thailand. We were months behind schedule, so many unexpected obstacles had to be overcome.
The photo above is of my friend Chamlong. He was second in command at the company in Rayong, and also the Bon Jovi fan who drove me to and from the office each day. Read my post "Its My Rife" to learn more about that.
Getting back to topic, we were behind schedule and the owner and everyone at his company were feeling badly, they felt that they had let me down. We had some parts arriving on this day, and with these parts we would be able to finish assembly of the cranes, do some testing at the facility and then deliver them to the rig. This would be a huge milestone and help our customers begin to regain some confidence in our abilities.
The wooden boxes finally arrived just after lunch time. We got out the crow-bars and were frantically opening the boxes like excited children on Christmas morning. We began pulling out the parts and staging them for assembly near the crane structures.
There was electricity in the air. We were going to have a functioning crane by tomorrow and be able to show it off to the customer. I began looking closely at the air motor assemblies, then at my specification, back at the motor, then at the catalog data. My heart sank. The vendor had sent the wrong motor assemblies, these won't even mount on the cranes much less deliver the required torque. It had taken over 8 weeks to get these. The customer was going to become very, very unhappy.
I called Pradit (the owner of the facility building the cranes) and Chamlong over to the motors and told them the bad news. They began to panic. I quickly assured them that it was clearly not their doing, the vendor had made a mistake. I asked Pradit to call the vendor to get new motors expedited (at the vendor's cost), and I called my customer to deliver the bad news-instead of the cranes they were expecting.
I then sat down in the office with Pradit and Chamlong and reviewed our situation. We would not be getting any more work done on these cranes for at least a week. They were still a bit panicked. Chamlong then asked me "what do we do now?" I responded with "we ride elephants." I had been wanting to ride elephants for some time and now I had time to do so. Chamlong and I went out to the elephant "place" had a Chang beer and rode elephants around the property and enjoyed life for awhile.
We both came to the understanding that day that some things are simply beyond one's control and when that happens, we ride elephants!
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From @rayjreviews