Gin & Tonic

A gin and tonic (G&T), as far as I’m concerned, has 3 key ingredients: Gin, tonic and ice. G&Ts are on the podium of my favourite drinks, likely finishing a humble third after a Guinness and an Espresso Martini. Guinness is great - my go to drink when you’re at the pub and you’d like a hug. If you’re a regular Guinness drinker you’ll know it isn’t heavy, bitter or highly calorific. It is in fact the opposite of these. BUT there are times when Guinness isn’t the right drink, maybe I need some spice in my life or maybe, heaven forbid, there isn’t Guinness on tap. Often, I deflect to a G&T.

To make a G&T you actually just put the three aforementioned ingredients in a glass and drink. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you need a mixologist in your life. G&Ts can be directly compared with Mining Engineering at Karouni Project in Guyana when considering proportions. This is the conclusion I have drawn after helping and shadowing the current mining engineer (Peter) for a week. 

The proportion of Gin in a G&T is small – often approximately a quarter of the glass. This is the proportion of time a mining engineer actually does any mining engineering. Tonic generally forms the majority of a G&T in terms of fluid. This represents a mining engineers time spent on general management. Lastly, a bartender might fill your glass up with ice or sometimes just give you a few cubes. To a mining engineer, ice is the time spent in meetings. It is highly variable, sometimes feels like a lot (am I rly paying £9.50 for ice???), other days feels just right and sometimes it sits there for so long that it melts into your drink resulting in dilution. Let me elaborate.

This is the first week that Peter has been back but the majority of his time is spend managing. I mean this is in the broadest sense. He is responsible for tasks affecting pretty much the whole mine. For example, he has been tasked with redesigning the magazine (area where explosives are kept). Apart from the actual redesign, most of his time and energy has been spent trying to get trucks, excavators, operators and other various resources in place at the right time. Currently he is talking to local labourers about how to handle explosives when moving them (top tip: don’t throw). This small paragraph doesn’t begin to do justice to the sheer number of small tasks that have needed attention up to this point. AND the 400 tons of explosives haven’t even arrived yet. There is also so much paperwork to be doing 24/7. I think the part that is hard to describe is the level of over management that is required. I mean, how are you supposed to plan or manage when the operator allowed to use the specific truck is brought to the magazine except a different truck is brought or on the one day that had been allocated to an excavator, it breaks down. I N F U R I A T I N G. None of the above required a mining engineering degree – lets be clear.

However, when you’re drinking a G&T and every so often you have a sip where you really taste the gin and you really appreciate it. Well, the gin is good here in spite of its rarity. Today we are spending some time on improving drill and blast. This is perhaps the part of mining engineering that excites me the most personally because it is a real balancing act. There are many parameters that are affected by more variables and like anything that is challenging, when you get good sized blast rock having used less money than the last blast, it feels good. For example, a real issue right now (rainy season) is mud and water negatively affecting blasting. The water causes mud to fill the blast holes which are drilled a few hours before they are charged. This results in worse blasting. Today we have been discussing methods to improve this by changing hole depth, sub-drilling, using more boosters, simply cleaning holes and possibly even more detonators. The point is, actual calculations and thinking occurred. A mining engineering degree is certainly helpful.

Meetings, meetings, meetings. Ice, ice baby. Some days there are baaaaaaaaare meetings and you have to pretend to concentrate and be interested in tables being constructed around camp or sample errors. I mean some are cool and important and most are necessary but again, most don’t require a mining engineering degree apart from the mine planning meetings which do. Some meetings are really intense and I’d like to shrink and die while others are genuinely interesting and engaging (discussing variable vane turbo failures). Ice is a necessary part of a G&T.

Posh readers will have noticed that at I am yet to mention garnishes. Some might even go as far as suggesting a G&T isn’t a G&T without a slice of lemon or lime. The thing is, sometimes you do get garnishes and sometimes you don’t. The same as mining engineering. A garnish could be a mine truck tipping sideways and stopping all haulage on the ramp. Or it could be security not willing to go down to the pits to approve the blast because he has wet boots. You get the idea. Some days you get peppercorns, some days you get citrus and some days you get herbs. Often, we have to sort it out. They’re never the same though.

I'm hoping as Peter and I spend more time here we will progress from the student union to fancy hotel bars which means 1:1 Gin:tonic ratio and the right quantity of ice every time. 

I might end the blog here unless anyone is dying to further understand the intricacies and technicalities (gin) of mining engineering. I will continue to add photos to the folder and Instagram. But yeah, everything else is good. Temperature is refreshing at the moment – the rain takes the humidity out of the air and the clouds keep the ground cool. Slightly dreading the August sun. Ordinarily I’d rely upon a good G&T to get me through the summer days but at camp we aren’t allowed any “hard liquor”. How’s that for mining engineering, eh?