6 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Yes, I remember flying over the refinery site on a trip back from Amsterdam and looking down to see...grass.... I think probably my most enduring contribution actually was the quality assurance manuals I arranged and largely wrote, based on my experience as a QA auditor, for lubricants production and distribution. That back-breaking work was so unglamorous that nobody was keen to do it again, once they were there! But I console myself they were important, even if not the sort of thing that launches brilliant careers.

That's like watching the child you raised grow up and die. Do think there's any chance that a chunk of those manuals are still lying somewhere? If I were you, I would've retrieved anything that was left of them and kept it to myself as souvenir...

1 hour ago, DavidWahl said:

Wow, you're an all rounder, I see. I can barely manage to keep up with one interest.

Its very hard to keep all things balanced.
I learnt advanced things of physics under 2 months(The one i need).
I simultaneously developed my work under 2 months too.

1 hour ago, studiot said:

In our little valley
They closed the colliery down
And the pithead baths is a supermarket now
Empty gurneys red with rust
Roll to rest admist the dust
And the pithead baths is a supermarket now

'Cause it's hard
Duw it's hard
It's harder than they will ever know
And it's they must take the blame
The price of coal's the same
But the pithead baths is a supermarket now

They came down here from England
Because our outputs low
Briefcasеs full of bank clerks
That had not never been bеlow
And they'll close the valley's oldest mine
Pretending that they're sad
But don't you worry butty bach
We're really very glad

'Cause it's hard
Duw it's hard
Harder than they will ever know
And it's they must take the blame
For the price of coal's the same
But the pithead baths is a supermarket now

But coal mining was in truth an awful job, much though it is glamorised in hindsight now, Hovis ad style. Not to mention the terrible effect of coal burning on the climate. It's a good thing the pits are closed.

Shell Haven refinery, where working conditions were pretty good, lasted quite a while. (In the early 80s it boasted the first women refinery technologists in the company. I was lucky enough to go out with the prettiest of them for a while - memories.) Not many people will be aware that the refinery, though owned by Shell, was actually named after a location on the Thames called Shell Haven, an inlet in which there were a lot of shells. Nothing to do with the company name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Haven Anyway now it's a container port - and no longer called Shell Haven. But refineries are obviously going to die out and that too is no bad thing. The world moves on.

1 hour ago, DavidWahl said:

That's like watching the child you raised grow up and die. Do think there's any chance that a chunk of those manuals are still lying somewhere? If I were you, I would've retrieved anything that was left of them and kept it to myself as souvenir...

No I have enough souvenirs already, including a framed photo of a N African guy sitting on a bench in some village, strumming a home-made guitar constructed out of a 5 litre can of Shell Rimula (an old brand of diesel engine oil) and a neck of wood. Sometimes I used to feel like that guy.

Edited July 29Jul 29 by exchemist

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

No I have enough souvenirs already, including a framed photo of a N African guy sitting on a bench in some village, strumming a home-made guitar constructed out of a 5 litre can of Shell Rimula (an old brand of diesel engine oil) and a neck of wood.

We keep moving forward and some people & things are left behind,but they stay in our memories.

I wonder where that guy is now and what he must be doing.

17 hours ago, exchemist said:

No I have enough souvenirs already, including a framed photo of a N African guy sitting on a bench in some village, strumming a home-made guitar constructed out of a 5 litre can of Shell Rimula (an old brand of diesel engine oil) and a neck of wood. Sometimes I used to feel like that guy.

I see. Anyways, thank you for sharing this. This is soulful and achingly poetic, enough to make a grown man cry. Now I'm sad.

1 hour ago, DavidWahl said:

I see. Anyways, thank you for sharing this. This is soulful and achingly poetic, enough to make a grown man cry. Now I'm sad.

Yes I thought it was a rather atmospheric photograph. The guy is clearly dirt-poor, dressed in ragged clothes, but he has a mean haircut and displays a certain coolness and independent resilience, in spite of his impoverished circumstances. I didn't take it, mind you. I found it in a skip when they closed the library at Shell Centre. I also picked up some books on diesel engines and marine propulsion, written between the wars. They had beautifully drawn diagrams in them, as technical books of that era often did. Amusingly, in one them the diesel engine was scrupulously referred to throughout as either the "oil engine" or the "Ackroyd-Stuart engine". It seems the writer, after the First World War, could not bring himself to acknowledge the engine was invented by a German!

(Side Note: Ackroyd-Stuart did invent an oil engine before Rudolf Diesel, but his was a "hot bulb" engine, in which a separate heated chamber was needed to pre-heat the fuel to make it burn before admission to the cylinder. It ran at far lower compression ratios than the diesel engine, in which compression alone generates a sufficiently high temperature for the fuel charge to burn. The diesel engine is far more efficient, although hot bulb, or Ackroyd-Stuart, engines were produced until the 1920s.)

Speaking of stuff that the company threw out or gave away, there used to be a gallery of the secondary uses people around the world made of Shell oil containers: drums, 5litre cans etc. A lot of water butts in East Africa were Shell drums at one time. Nowadays, such a gallery would be seen as pollution or the evil influence of a multinational [boo, hiss] but those were simpler times. There was also a magnificent collection of butterflies from around the world that someone had accumulated and donated to the company in the 1960s, and a display of all the seashells whose names were given to the ships in the Shell Tanker fleet - and also to the brands of lubricating oil, almost all of which to this day are named after shells: Spirax, Turbo etc.

One of the odd things about ageing is to find the company one worked for, for so many years, transformed in public perception from something one could be rather proud of (keeping all the many different kinds of machines that society relies on running smoothly) into a diabolical, evil monster. I suppose it was ever thus.

Edited July 30Jul 30 by exchemist

On 7/29/2025 at 8:29 AM, Dhillon1724X said:

,you guys are really old

Ouch.

True though!

I'm new myself but unfortunately nowhere near your age. I just wanted to chime in and say I love seeing young people passionate about science and eager to learn. My specialty is astronomy so if you have any questions feel free to ask. Good luck!

On 7/29/2025 at 3:29 AM, Dhillon1724X said:

I was wondering,
what you guys must have done when you all were young.
Did you make theories too?

I was an 'all-rounder', and did many things, in my mid-teens also; none of them very well.

Now, at 66 years of age, there is only one activity I really miss.
Chasing girls, and not getting anywhere.

So make sure you have some fun too, at your age, as that is what you'll miss most when you're old.

On 9/16/2025 at 10:50 PM, Quint Revenge said:

I'm new myself but unfortunately nowhere near your age. I just wanted to chime in and say I love seeing young people passionate about science and eager to learn. My specialty is astronomy so if you have any questions feel free to ask. Good luck!

I will ask for sure.
I am bit less active but i read everything in my interest.
Now i am working on some projects and have a small team.

On 9/17/2025 at 2:45 AM, MigL said:

I was an 'all-rounder', and did many things, in my mid-teens also; none of them very well.

Now, at 66 years of age, there is only one activity I really miss.
Chasing girls, and not getting anywhere.

So make sure you have some fun too, at your age, as that is what you'll miss most when you're old.

I find exploring new things fun.

There's a famous line "Death and Love will find you when its time."

I am doing many things too but i am not master in those things.

I learn alot from all of you guys,
I will miss you all someday.

I took @studiot words in my mind and now i sleep at time in exams.