My last post

27 août 2020 16:54 Published by Lina Sbai Laisser vos pensées

Hello dear readers and fellow bloggers,

I hope you are all doing well. I can’t believe how fast the summer went by, and I acknowledge that I say that about every summer Lol. As I was getting ready for my last semester at university, I received some great news: my internship is extended until the end of December ! I will be working part time starting from next week, and studying part time as well. I am grateful for this opportunity since I believe that there is still a lot to do and to learn at Resolute.

In this last blog post, I would like to share with you fascinating information I learned while working on a project.

Disclaimer: The following content might sound a little technical, but if you can hold on through it, there will be a relevant punchline at the end Lol

I was assigned by my supervisor to report critical results of oil analysis of different equipments in the mill. Oil analysis basically consists of taking a small sample of oil from an equipment, sending it to a laboratory for analysis, and documenting the results on an oil report. This report contains data about the level of contamination by different types of metals, and the physical and chemical properties of that oil sample. Here is a sample of what the report looks like:

Oil in our industry is like the blood of our machinery. If you want to know the health of your machine without having to open it up, you just take a sample of its oil, and it can tell you what the issue is and direct you to a potential solution. Why do some machines need oil ? Imagine two metal gears meshing in contact with each other, while they both rotate at 1000 rpm. It would take no time for those teeth to break and for the machine to break. Oil not only serves as a fluid layer that reduces friction between them, but it can also tell you if your equipment is deteriorating when particles of worn metal are found during the oil analysis.

One of these equipment was a lubrication unit (a big oil container) that pumps oil to different places (motors, gearboxes, refiners…). The oil is pumped out of this unit, passes through filters to get filtered, then goes to the destined equipment through pipes, and then back again to the uni to form a closed loop.

This strikingly resembles the blood flow in the human body. The heart pumps the blood to organs through veins, then goes through the kidneys to be filtered, and back again to the heart to form a closed loop.

I find these similarities mind-blowing for two reasons:

• Humans, as incredibly smart and creative as they are, can only create something from something that exists in the realm of creation. However, they are inspired by everything around them, including themselves
• The Matrix is real (LOL if you watched the movie, this joke would make sense). Just look at this:

– Pumps vs Heart

– Filters vs Kidneys

– Pipes vs Veins

– Oil reports vs Blood reports 

– Gears vs Joints 

– Motor vs Soul

– Electricity vs Air

If you are not creeped out yet, you should ! Watch your backs people LOL.

All jokes aside though, I love finding connections like these. They give me a better perspective of who I am and what I’m doing. You can get lost sometimes in big companies, the corporate world, the deadlines and the budgets. I like taking some distance from time to time to tell myself: we make newspaper print. A kind  friend of mine told me once when I told her what my job consisted of: “You are what makes that older man happy when he is reading his newspaper in the morning while drinking his coffee on the terrasse”. It touched my heart in a different way and almost gave me a beautiful higher purpose. My mom also says that newspapers are great for wiping windows, and she doesn’t know how much it triggers me to see wet newspapers :O Really mom ? after all the machines, meticulous processes and money put into its production ?  Well, my only consolation is that our paper has a better fate than the one toilet paper has… Lol 😀    

I thank you all for reading my last blog post. It has been such a fun experience to share my thoughts with you and receive your kind and encouraging messages. It means a lot!

Take care of yourselves and may peace be with you,

Lina