Another Busy Week Living in the Ooze

In case you didn't get it, the way to pronounce UZ is with a long oo sound, just like ooze. 

Our weather took a nasty turn today.  It is 40 and raining.  Rotten for the only day of the week we have a chance to see daylight.  The only real change this week is that there are fewer of us.  One guy who took a lot of pictures left.  I'll post good ones, when I get a chance.  My boss also left.  He has to take care of his relocation from Korea to his new house in Florida.  He'll be back in early March.  Needless to say this leaves me and my traveling partner in charge of solving the myriad of problems this sprawling plant has, in the supply of material.  We have already begun using the problem solving techniques we know from our experiences in North American plants.  Each failure is another opportunity to make positive change.  Our mission is to teach these techniques to the folks here and attempt to make permanent improvements.  We will not be getting bored anytime soon.

Today, Sunday, is the exception.  We only went to the plant for about three hours.  Our main goal was to understand what held the body shop for so long this morning, at the end of the shift.  We also wanted to be certain that the crew unloading sea containers was on schedule.  We learned what we needed to, devised an improved method of tracking performance and checked on the warehouse.  Then we left and headed to UZ Turk.  I had a fresh salad in addition to the lamb chops today.  The salad was tomato, cucumber, onion, parsley and a couple leaves of lettuce.  It was dressed in vinegar and oil with orange wedges on the side.  I liked it.  The lamb chops were delish, as usual.  They seemed to have everything on the menu today.  The English speaking waiter, the one that was chastised last week, seemed concerned that the boss was not with us.  We could have not told him he was on vacation and let him think he really quit coming but we didn't.

After our lunch we headed to the Yange (pronounced Yangee) Bazaar.  Yange means new.  This is where I had purchased dried fruit and almonds, in the past.  I got some more of the dried fruit and I also bought some apples.  My Indian friend also wanted some apples and bananas.  We chose a young lady vendor as her fruit looked good.  When she told him the price of bananas, he negotiated her down.  He never just pays the price asked.  In this case he paid about 300 cym less than she asked.  For reference, that is about 8 cents.  He gave her an extra 500 cym just for the fun.  She did not want to keep the extra money.  When he refused to take the change, she offered him an orange.  He would not take it either so she offered it to our driver.  He agreed to take it.  I took her picture while she was unaware.  I will post it on FB later.  She seemed pleased when I showed it to her.  We will purchase from her again and she will know what to expect.

This week will be incredibly difficult.  I realized today that one of the things they are doing is really messing things up.  I called on an expert to help me understand what I was seeing.  I was hoping for the best but fearing the worst.  I got the email back, my fears were confirmed.  Our most important assignment this week will be to get the folks screwing things up to understand, fix it and stop screwing it up.  This one may impact my sleep this week.

Remember, be grateful. 

Happy Valentines Day