Someone would say my career has changed.
When at the age of primary school, all you know is that you have to do your best. At that age you do not really know what you would like to become in life. This tends to get form in high school, probably in the last year, when you think you have everything worked out. Next step: university level. From then on, the main thoughts would be to get your degree, specialize in a particular subject, find a nice job, fulfill your dreams, travel, get to know places and people, in one sentence: Enjoy life. However, things may not usually come out the way you plan, think and expect, either for better or for worse. In any case, you just have to face them, sort things out, getting the most out of them in the direction of your plans in life.
When finishing my high school, the world of electronics caught my attention back in the early 70s. So, I planned my life around that goal, I directed every single effort to accomplish that, which I did at North London Polytechnic. Just before leaving my home to start my studies, I had also planned to get married after I had enjoyed life, after I was 30 years old or a bit more. What I did not plan was to fell in love with a nice young lady and getting married almost 10 years before I thought I would, even before we had got our bachelor’s degree. Do not get me wrong, the last 47 years have worth every single moment. We travelled together, treasured every moment, till finally we decided it was time for the kids to come. At this moment we evaluated what we had and if it was time to get a better job since the family would grow. And so, we did.
This decision took me to gain experience in many industrial fields in the plastic cup industry, plastic weaving bag and big-bags industry, aluminum coil and aluminum foil production plants, assembling automotive plants, iron annealing and metal melting furnaces for the production of casting iron parts, either in the maintenance activities, projects developments and/or executions of them. Since I graduated in electronics back in 1981; by mid-2013 I decided to offer my services as an independent consultant or a freelancer since that experience provided me with an integral formation, not only at plant level, but also evaluating suppliers, administrating resources, etc.
Either mechanical, hydraulic, electrical or electronic the challenge I faced; I remembered my mentor when he used to say: “There is no task bigger than you. It may take you some time, but you will solve it”. That provided me with a lot of confidence when offering my services.
As an example, and I guess to try me out, a window frame production plant needed some storage racks in their finished product warehouse. I was provided with the raw material, supplies, welding machinery and a working team, whom I have to test to find out how good welders they were since we had to manufacture 200 racks, 5 m tall, 1 m wide, and 3 m in length, in 4”x4” structural tubing in no more than 2 months. That, honestly had nothing to do with electronics.
Welding the 4"x4" structural tubing to construct the platforms
Assembling the constructed platforms to rasier the racks
Already assembled racks in the finished product warehouse
Another challenge I faced when working as a freelancer, was to organize a service workshop for a Chevrolet Dealer. The service department then was measured with what was called Customer Satisfaction Index, or CSI. This evaluated not only how customers were attended, but also how good the installations were. Here again, nothing to do with electronics.
Chevrolet Dealer garage or work shop
Bottom floor of the work-shop of the Chevrolet Dealer
In some other occasion it was the time to download from a ship more than 400 chinese vehicles, Chery make, making sure they started when the engine was cranked and resolve any other malfunctioning those cars could present. Here again, nothing to do with electronics.
Downloading the chinese cars, Chery Make from the ship
Preparing the Dual Cabim Chary Trucks 4x2 and 4x4 to be downloaded
As a summary, university prepares you in a particular field, to go out and develop yourself as a technician, as an engineer. However, it is the university of life that teaches you how to amalgamate university studies with your surrounding knowledge and use it on your behalf, and for sure it is not necessarily what you graduated in. So, you end up being a polyphacetic professional.
All the pictures are of my own
