Wednesday, 10 October 2012

Museu da Electricidade and Back To London

09/10/12


This morning I was up even earlier to maximise my time at the Museu da Electricidade. I also wanted to stop at a recommended cake shop to get a custard tart thing. I had a quick breakfast with Gui (thanks so much for having me by the way, Portuguese are fantastic hosts) before I set off at to wrangle the public transport system at about 9. I had intended to be out of the house so I was in a bit of hurry. So much so that I must have take a wrong turn somewhere. But I have no idea how I took a wrong turn  as all I had to do was go straight! Nevertheless I was completely lost. I cursed myself for assuming it would be so easy and didn't look at a map, usually if I have a picture in my head I can work things out. I started asking people where the metro was and it turned out I was a fairly long way away. In trying to find a metro stop from directions from someone I got lost again. Finally I found one at about 9:30 (should have only taken me 5min!). It also turned out I was two stops away from where I thought I was going to catch it, much further and I think I would have been off the end of the line! Dumb. This was really annoying as it was all eating into my electricity time.

The rest of the trip to my museum stop was no problem at all. I even found the cake shop and got a custard thing just in time before an army of Asian tourist arrived and the line went outside the door. It was exceptionally yum and totally worth it.

The museum itself was fantastic. It was in a an old coal fired power station that had been converted by the Portuguese electricity authority, and it was free too! The first thing I was greeted with was an excellent presentation about how the whole plant worked with flashing lights showing the different bit when they were being talked about:


Then when the presentation finished the machine in the furnace behind me started up so I could see how the furnace conveyor belt moved the coal through it. I wandered along further and got a hell of a fright by this guy yelling at me in Portuguese!

He wasn't actually real which kinda made it a bit creepier. There were lots of good explanation panels around which I read before going up and through the furnace. They had done a really good job with the lighting. The coals you can see were backlit with red so they looked like they were burning and the blue tubes you can see actually had water in them with bubbles showing the direction of the water flow.


When I was out of the furnace around the corner I found this nice wee 450kVA transformer. It was beautifully backlight with lights that change colour. Maybe if all electrical assets were this pretty people wouldn't mind them so much? I can just imagine lighting up all of our transformers, poles and towers with multi-coloured LED's!


In the middle part of the museum was an interactive exhibition which had lots of cool stuff for kids (and big kids) to play with. There was a pretty boss Jacobs ladder:


There was lots of things that you wind up and connect together to show how electricity is conducted through various objects. There were things showing how voltage works and resistance and stuff. It was all interactive and I think I spent far too long in there for how old I was. There was one really cool thing which had a cord hanging out of a wall below a TV screen. When you pulled the cord it you "virtually" pulled the electrical cord on the screen. Then you basically pulled the entire power system towards you. From the fuseboard in the house, to the powerlines outside, to the substation, to the towers, another substation and then the generation. The physics of it were really good as everything fell down and it was an excellent way of showing how the power system all fit together.

In the next room was the machine hall and the condensers. One of the turbines had all of the covers off it which was cool to see:


All in all I was pretty stoked I went. I rushed around it a bit too fast as I was worried about missing my flight.

I made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare and spent the rest of my Euros on a ridiculously priced burger (I could have got 7 custard tart things for the same price!) and a dark chocolate Toblerone. The flight and trip to Haydens place was pretty uneventful. They got a bit grumpy at the airport again because I forgot to get Haydens address again.

"How are you getting to where you are going today?"
"I'm going to take the train, then the underground and then walk"
"How are you going to walk to a place you don't know the address of?"
"I have been there before"
"But you don't know the address?"
"Of course I don't know the bloody address you stupid muppet, when you meet your friend at Starbucks do you find know the address of bloody starbucks you are going to?"

I didn't say the last one but I think they are getting a little hung up on the physical address thing. What is the point of it anyway and what's to stop me putting a fake one?

It was kinda weird tracing my steps back to Haydens flat. I can just imagine it feeling a bit the same going back home but amplified somehow. On the tube hearing everyone speaking with an English accent I realised how much I had loved travelling around Europe and how super stoked I was to be going to North America next and to Canada to look for work. I think even despite the language issues I would rather work in mainland Europe rather than the UK.

At Haydens I was greeted by a new Beanie (Thanks Mum, you're the best). We walked to a (apparently magical) Sainsburys and bought ingredients for burritos for dinner. We had a bit of trouble focussing on buying stuff though as we were talking too much which resulted in about an hour in the supermarket. After we had cooked up our delicious dinner we watched Spinal Tap and ate Toblorone for dessert.

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