Azaleas

Tsutsugi

Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2004 9:37 PM
Subject: Weekly Email

Just a quick note this week. I went to the national gardens at Shinjuku Goen this last Sunday because the azaleas were in bloom and also to see the last of the cherry blossoms. In Japanese, azaleas are called Tsutsugi and cherry trees are Sakura. Anyway, that was very nice and I have attached a picture of the last of the cherry blossoms. This one is a "double" pink which are the late bloomers.

Last night several of us when and ate Sukiyaki which is meat and vegetables cooked at your table in a soy broth. Very good. Other than that it has been a week mostly of work. The big effort will be over the next two weeks.

USC Concert at Disney

Awesome concert - we all enjoyed it. See David playing bass on the far left?

Los Angeles

Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 12:01 AM
Subject: Weekly Email

This weekend I am in Los Angeles with Mother to attend David's concert in the new Disney Concert Hall. I had a good flight to LA on Friday and David and I went down to Malibu for dinner on Friday evening. No real problems with jetlag, I must be getting used to trans-Pacific crossings

Saturday we picked up Mother about noon and went to the Los Angeles Museums that are next to the La Brea tar pits. They were very nice, especially the section on American art and furnishings. Last night we ate dinner at a seafood restaurant on the beach.

The Walt Disney Center is nice so we are looking forward to the concert. David and I walked by it on Friday.

Will tell you how it was next week.

Hatta-san and I

Office Politics

Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 2:11 PM
Subject: Weekly Email

Happy Easter - I hope you are enjoying the day. Today is a really nice spring day in Tokyo, clear, and short sleeves weather. I've been working on the income tax but plan to get out shortly. I have picked a fairly famous garden that I plan to go to.

This week I thought I would tell you about the office politics instead of the standard description of the cherry blossoms, temples, shrines, or festival. There are office politics in Japan just like I suspect there are in every country. It is fun to watch them here because it is a bit like a silent movie - you can't understand what they are saying but you can deduce what is happening.

All of the engineers, and therefore guys, work on the other side of the building and you have to walk over there. As soon as you walk in you are out of place and accordingly there is nothing to see. But on our side it is much more interesting. We have Japanese secretaries, all women. They speak the best english at least partially because they are more frequently around westerners. The men are always called by their last names and add -san which is the typical sign of respect, similar to calling someone Mr. Smith instead of Jim. But the women we call by their first names and add -san. And they call us by our first names so I am Frank-san. If we were following standard Japanese protocol we would all call each other by our last names.

On Thursday I went to dinner with Hatta-san who is my project manager counterpart in Chiyoda. They know I will eat about anything and he took me to a specialty sushi restaurant in Tsurumi where we work. I had eaten everything there before, so not only did I not leave anything on the plate, I spouted off the names and told the owner how good it was in Japanese. This impressed her to no end and she spent about 15 minutes telling me how wonderful I was to eat fried fish head, sea urchin, and beach clams. Hatta-san was translating and it was just like in the movies. She would speak about 90 seconds and then Hatta-san would say "She said she has never seen an American who likes sea urchin". And I would wonder how come it took 90 seconds to say that.

Anyway, I used all the polite Japanese I knew and the staff followed us out of the restaurant. Most of them wanted to shake my hand and I got plenty of bows. The next day I was semi-famous at work and one of the Japanese engineers told me that even he didn't like sea urchin. Actually it isn't too bad - it is just mushy and doesn't look too appetizing.

I finally went to the seafood market here in Tokyo last Sunday. They were "butchering" a huge tuna at one place - it was as big as a cow. So I said to the guy "Maguro desu ka?" which means "Is it tuna?". They love this and you usually get about 2 to 3 minutes of reply in Japanese of which I catch very little. But this guy kept it simple and I caught some of it - he ended up giving me a piece to take away. Even knowing a little bit of a language can go a long way.

Well, I have put off the income tax long enough. I also have to get ready for the trip to see David in LA.

Have a wonderful Easter.

More Flowers

Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2004 9:43 AM
Subject: Weekly Email

This week the sakura petals are starting to fall. The trees are still pretty much covered with blossoms but in some areas there is a light pink carpet on the ground. When a gust of wind comes there is a shower of petals. So by next week it will probably be pretty much gone. When I walked to work yesterday the Zo-jo-ji temple was flooded with blooms and they were having a festival of some sort. The azaleas are starting to bloom right behind them and right now the weather is really beautiful. All of the Japanese were out and walking about yesterday.

All the visitors I had told me I needed to watch the movie "Lost in Translation" about Bill Murray in Japan. I'm not much on movies but one of the guys at work had it and let me borrow it. It really enjoyed it. I think it must be a bit hard to identify with if you have never been dropped in a strange country but I could identify with a lot of it, especially since it is set in Tokyo. You can see my apartment building in it. After seeing it, I still can't tell you where the dinosaur building is - maybe Ginza - I'm not sure. The Family Mart is out of the Sapporo Beer Dog - I'll go back and look today.

We have been working on getting our FEED (Front End Engineering & Design) package ready for bidding the job. Last Wednesday it went out. Our management was in Japan just prior to release and I spent 3 days briefing them. Prior to today I had worked straight days since Teresa, Megan, and David left. Yesterday I only worked a couple of hours and today I am taking off. I can feel the release of tension already. But tonight I will try and get the income tax finished.

The project that I am working on produces liquefied natural gas (LNG) for transport and sales. It is the same gas you use to heat your house and cook on. The process refrigerates the gas down to about -260 degrees and turns it into a liquid. At that temperature, the LNG can be stored and transported since it reduces in volume down to about 1/600th of what it would be at the burner tip. It weighs about half what water does so the special tankers that transport it don't draw much draft. In the process we make propane, butanes, condensate, sulfur, and if we want, helium.

The LNG trains that we are designing are about twice as big as anything built before. Each train is about a kilometer long and uses three GE Frame 9 turbine-compressor-generator sets. Frame 9s are the "big boys" of gas turbines and this is the first application in this kind of mechanical service although there are a number of them in generator service. It now looks like we may build 6 to 8 more trains. If this is done, the trains that we are designing will produce a third of the world's LNG. The size of each train is such that the financing of one train alone will be the second largest project finance in the world today.

When our management was here they asked me to be project manager through start-up on the first train which is about 3 and a half years from now. I have been working hard to put myself in a place to be considered for that so I was pleased. You don't get many opportunities like that in a career - it will change the way LNG is produced and shipped and have an impact on a world scale. There are details to be figured out but it is something I would like to do. In any event, I have agreed to stay in Japan an additional 3 months to do post-FEED technical work and oversight of the technical bidding.

So, this has been a big week. I am trying to arrange to go see David in concert at the Walt Disney auditorium later in the month. It was really great to see everyone here and I look forward to getting back home for a while.