Yeap. Finally finished up my last day at work. To be honest, it felt a little bit sad. Not that i missed doing all those things but the whole 1 month plus going up and down the mrt line, meeting funny people, talking whole day about cameras and laughing altogether – sure will be some memories left there.
Life moves on i guess. I’ve posted my last picture about the stuff that we do there in this post and no those things are not teh peng. Probably will never touch them again.
It’s my 3rd last day at work today. So far everything i’ve dealt with is steel – stainless steel, carbon steel, steel for heat treatment, duplex steel, chromoly steel and more steel.
So when a titanium alloy came in today for microstructure, it was a refreshing change and wooo i went to polish it right away.
BAD CHOICE. Turns out, titanium only sounds good. cut myself while grinding it coz titanium is really #$%@# hard to polish. Plus i can’t cut and mount it on a sample holder because they have to examine the etched sample under low magnification.
Speaking about etching. Unlike steels which require nital (3% HNO3 with ethanol), titanium requires the chemical you see in the picture. Now if you have studied chemistry, you’d know that HF (in the pic) is quite ‘fun’.
"HF chemical burns can be treated with a water wash and 2.5% calcium gluconate gel or special rinsing solutions. However, because it is absorbed, medical treatment is necessary; rinsing is not enough. In some cases, amputation is required." (Wikipedia, 2010)
Maybe my chemistry teacher exaggerated quite a bit so when i was handling the etchant, i was wearing 3 pairs of gloves at the same time. It doesn’t help that the rest of the more senior colleagues just retreated to their desks. HAHA.
And then I over-etched the sample. Which means i’d have to do it again. Tomorrow. starting from polishing.
It was a good one and half months working with a bunch of fun loving colleagues. Now it’s time to say bye bye again.
So, journey to the west is ending. Last episode this Thursday. 715 am. Looking back I quite enjoyed it actually – other than waking up early and getting home late.
btw those things u see up there are samples which we do our tests on. looks pretty cool but doing it 15452346 times and u know what i mean.
You know when you first started out to look for a job, you’d get all your files – resume, certs, testimonials etc all in a folder. I was hoping to get rid of that folder maybe about 3 months into looking for a job. Getting rid of course, means hiding them somewhere not visible larh.
Turns out it takes about half a year or so. And I guess not many people will have a ‘Resignation’ file inside their folder so soon though. It just shows how complete my folder is – from cover letters, resume, certs, testimonials… all the way to resignation in a matter of six months.
There were times when i wonder why’d i go through all these things. There still are times like that and i guess there will be times like that in the future. But i really ponder at the wonderful timing that He set into place – from BTT to a friend’s wedding, all settled before i move on to another job. It truly does reminds me that my life is not my own, but it is His and He knows what He’s doing.
Granted, i might have been a bit overzealous while taking up this job, making myself having to apologise to some. But i’d say i’ve never regretted taking it up – knowing people, learning new things, feeling how it’s like to commute 3 hours a day to and fro. It’s something new and i truly appreciate it – honestly, i have not, and will not, for the rest of my time there, pull on a long face to work, not even one day.
I guess its a funny thing sometimes.
