Reed in Asia - Asian diary - Asia30: My first day alone at the dome

Reed in Asia

My first day alone at the dome

A life changing trip

At the dome the next day I had to start planning the installation properly, I was alone now and the success of this project was totally my responsibility now, so with the A/C switched on, I sat in the dome and started writing my installation schedule and occasionally referring to the technical manuals to make sure that I had covered everything. When my list was completed, I started on my first task, I had to install the terrain projectors, these were basically Kodak slide projectors on specially designed one metre high metal stands placed at thirty degree intervals around the 'target area' and the slides that were inserted would project a landscape scene onto the dome screen surface, to give the illusion of actually being in a 'defence zone'. The landscape scenes required could be selected by the customer from GQ's existing stock, or the customer had the option of GQ producing a new landscape scene that would be appropriate for their defence requirements and terrain.

So my work that morning was to calculate, measure and mark the points for the positioning of the terrain projectors and then fit the projector stands to the dome base in the appropriate positions by drilling into the base and bolting the stands to it (so much for being an electronics engineer!). It was a slow process and I had only aligned and fitted two of the stands by lunchtime, then I locked the dome, left the base and took a slow walk down the road to Cafe On and I had some chicken curry and rice and a couple of beers for lunch. Back at the dome later, I managed to fit the remaining stands in the afternoon, then I fitted and aligned the terrain projectors themselves, connected them to the central controller, inserted some slides into them and I could now change the internal surrounding terrain from a basic countryside scene to a desert scene if I wanted to and I felt quite pleased with myself, this was the first time that I had done a terrain projector installation and they all worked fine. I had just finished checking the terrain projectors when the dome door opened and my driver walked in, I checked my watch and it was 17:30 already, so I shut the systems down, went outside, locked the dome door, closed the main breaker and locked the breaker box too.

Back at the hotel, I went straight to the lounge as usual and ordered a beer, I had just about finished it when the other GQ guys turned up and asked me to go into Bangkok with them, I hadn't even been up to my room yet, so I quickly went to my room dropped my briefcase off, give my face a quick swill and just managed to get back downstairs again as the minibus was ready to leave. Once in Bangkok we all went to the Tavvern, the other guys were all talking with Tony and thanking him for his help sometimes, this was their last night in Thailand so they were all drinking quite heavily and Tony paid for a round of beer for them, I just sat in my usual seat there and had a couple of games of darts with Phet. Then Adrian came over to me and said that they were going out around the other bars and they wanted me to go with them, I wasn't really interested, but Adrian said "Come on, this is our last night here we would like you to be with us", so at that I relented and we all went out and did a pub crawl of many of the go-go bars in Patpong, by late evening each of the others had a girl with them that they had picked up in one of the bars and I felt a bit of an outsider with this group then, but at the next bar we went into they all started pushing girls at me, I wasn't really interested, but just to stop them, I let one girl sit with me and bought her a drink or two.

When we left that bar the girl wanted to go with me, but I waved her away, the others tried to cajole me into taking her with me, but I just refused. They then got a taxi and everyone, girls and all, piled into it to go back to the Airport hotel, they tried to make me go with them, but I declined and just watched them drive away. I went back to the Tavvern sat at my usual seat and Tony came over to sit with me and started asking about the others, I told him what had happened and he just smiled and nodded his head like this was normal. I stayed in the Tavvern for the rest of that night listening to music, playing darts and drinking beer of course until it was time for me to get the minibus back to the hotel. Back at the hotel, I went through my usual evening routine, I went into the disco for a beer and there was no sign of the others, so they must have gone straight to their rooms with the girls, I only had one beer in the disco that night and then went to bed, work again in the morning.