Fronzel.com

It amazes me sometimes that I can travel to the opposite side of the world, and end up in a city that isn’t much different from any other city. But there are little differences.

I think the biggest is smoking. I don’t care if somebody smokes and I am fairly certain the dangers of secondhand smoke are overstated. Plus, I work in the oilfield. Cancer is a given. However, it is still startling to see somebody just light up in restaurant. Or trying to figure out why I’m having a hard time breathing only to realize I haven’t been in a smoke filled restaurant in ages.

Most of my travels in Europe, even if I don’t speak the language(Germany, Holland, Scotland),   I can still pick out meanings from signs just because of similarities in the language. Russia, Middle East and Asia are different. The languages and cultures are so alien to me, I feel lost.

It is interesting to me that here in Vietnam, there are more bilingual signs and English speakers than there are in Mexico, which shares a hemisphere with me. And they seem to be willing to learn English and share charliespeak with me. The Mexicans really weren’t.

And it isn’t just the number of ex-pats. Vung Tau is an oilfield town like Del Carmen and both are filled with roundeyes.The Vietnamese just seem more willing to help. Most of the ex-pats come from Asia and Oceania, So I guess English is just the agreed upon language.

This is also with my limited experiences in Vung Tau. I may change my mind when we go up to Danang or if I get to spend some time in Ho Chi Minh.

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Originally uploaded by Fronzel
This is the front desk for our office in Vietnam.

The secretary came to me with some candy and offered it. I took it and she said she likes to give me candy because I must like it since I am so fat.

Two minutes later, she repeated the same thing about me in English to the other Vietnamese secretary.

The first night in Ho Chi Minh(not Saigon, but Ho Chi Minh. If you have a date in Saigon, She’ll love you long time in Ho Chi Minh) I stayed at a nice hotel. From there, I moved to the Song Hong Hotel that has an overly complicated shower control system.

Today, I ate a few Rambutan.  They taste pretty sweet and are delicious. Just disturbing looking.

The flight over was hard to sort out. I was given a date to be here by, and getting on a flight into Vietnam was difficult. It is a real hotspot apparently. Or just hot.  I worked for 12 hours today getting my equipment ready. I drank roughly 5 liters of water and sweated it all out.

From Ho Chi Minh I took a hydrofoil to Vung Tau. The people in Vung Tai are friendly, the city look like every other city down to the KFC on the corner(All hail the monoculture). Being a pedestrian is interesting. Motorcycles are everywhere and the drivers assume they have the right of way. I’ve noticed the signs spell the country as Viet Nam, not Vietnam. And Pronouncing it the redneck way of Vietnam instead of Vietnom will get you corrected. Maybe they shouldn’t put an A in it. Of course, I’m the jerk if I correct their pronunciation of my name.

I was hoping for a quick job, but with every email, the job gets longer.

Absolutely huge. I’ve been thinking about taking my HTPC, loading it down with terrabytes of space and load all of my movies into it.

I’m not sure if I can justify the 650 dollars at this point. I need a new reciever first.

The lead tool hand here sounds like Bela Lugosi. And he is so polite. I half expect to hear him say “Senior, Senior… Please… Let me drink your blood”.

There are times when I am glad I don’t speak Spanish. I think I would have been killed if the wireline hand would have understood me when he explained to me that it is my fault his 3100 meter cable is too short when I originally told him we needed 3512 meters and we actually need 3495 meters of cable. And the cable they brought to the rig isn’t the right type or the right pressure rating on top of being too short. We had the original meeting about this when I was here 2 weeks ago and when we go to the rig a week ago we told him our requirements. He didn’t bother to look until 12 hours before we needed it. Thankfully for us, Pemex isn’t really sure what an oil well is, so we have been delayed to the point it isn’t a big issue right now, but it could’ve been a 200,000 dollar a day issue.

On the 15th, I’ve scheduled vacation to attend a fine furniture building class. Instead, I am offshore in Mexico sharing a room with a Mexican nudist that smells uncomfortably like feet. Yay.

When I got to Mexico City, I went to the bathroom in the airport. The automatic soap dispenser was out, so I used the manual one on the wall. Got my hands good and soapy… only to find out the automatic water faucet was broken. So I had to use paper towels to wipe the soap off.

From there, I went through immigration. When I’ve done it before, it has been through Del Carmen. They stamp a piece of paper, keep a copy and give you a copy. This time, the guy stamped his copy and tore up mine and said I don’t need one. Most countries are pretty strict. If they give you a piece of paper, they want it back. So I may have fun getting out.

After that, I flew to Poza Rica, Mexico. The whole time, I was hoping my bag made it. I had a much tighter connection than I like, but everything made it there.

A night in the hotel, and than off to the dock to take a boat to the rig. From the boat, I had to ride a crew basket up to the rig. It has been a while since I’ve done that. I normally ride in a helicopter.

On the rig, I’ve been put into a two man room, which is nice. I’m sharing a pretty squalid and industrial bathroom with three other blokes, and I think my roommate is part cat. He sleeps most of the day and night.

A drawback is I don’t really have an internet connection. There is a single ethernet cable hanging down from the roof of the cementing unit that I have to share with all the other Halliburton hands.

So, we’ve finally decided to buy a house and have the one we want under contract.

It is a 2/1.5 brick ranch built around the 1950’s. The previous owner was either eccentric or old, so it has all these interesting features like wonderfully tacky light fixtures and pink tiles. We need to change those out and make a few upgrades to it to make it fit us.

The city requires us to change out all the water fixtures to save water. After looking at the cost and effort, we decided to spend a few extra dollars and remodel one of the bathrooms. Which will be a neat project for us to do.

After that we need to put a garage door up so I can have my workshop and supply it with electricity.

It looks like I am returning to Mexico in the morning and may miss the closing. But I’ll keep this space updated.

Less then a year ago, I replaced my Targus XL laptop bag with an Ogio Epic. After pretty light travel, it is falling apart.

I contacted Ogio and apparently, the lifetime warranty covers the lifetime of something other than me or the bag. The helpful Ogio lady did offer me 50% off on my next Ogio bag purchase. But I don’t know if I want to do that. I’m disappointed in the way this one has turned out.

Sadly, I can’t find a single company that makes a gadget backpack. Most are school bags with a laptop compartment.

To go offshore, I need a special badge. Possibly a special school. I hope not. I’ve done it before. I sit in a room with a few locals, watch videos in their language, listen to lectures in their language and I’m given a little certificate. Normally, it is the same videos and lectures I’ve heard a dozen times for all my other certifications. It is a boring class and they get all uppity if I pull out a book or Gameboy. Even more if I go to sleep.

So yesterday, we went to a photo place and ended up taking a quick tour of the beachfront. Pretty beach, most of the restaurants were open air and it was filled with people being people.

Sadly, I left my camera in my back in the trunk. So I couldn’t take pictures of all the people that don’t understand wearing a mask. I’ve seen them on foreheads, necks, chins, scrunched up to protect just the nose, scrunched up to just protect the mouth and one guy wearing three different types.

The picture place took 12 pictures for 40 pesos(about 4 dollars. Zeroes are meaningless here) and they photoshopped me into a suit. Sadly, the pictures are about a half inch in size, so I can’t use them for anything.

I’ve been working on building an End-Grain cutting board.  I ordered some Jatoba and Maple from Bell Forest Products. This was before I found a decent lumberyard near me.

I let it sit in the house for a week or two so it could acclimate to Georgia weather, and finally got around to cutting one board before the power went out. The wood is a bit thicker then I am used to, but my little Craftsman tablesaw handled it fine. I just had the blade cranked almost all the way out. I found out my kickback pawls weren’t designed for wood this thick. A little scary, but it didn’t have any problems. I was a little worried about how it would handle a thick slab of hardwood

Saturday, we went to a woodturning day at the Dogwood Institute. We saw a few guys turning bowls and pens and one guy was giving a course on turning stools.  Sadly, my little Sherline lathe isn’t big enough for those sorts of projects. After visiting Dogwood I feel a lot better about the class I signed up for. The area looks nice and all the people we saw there seemed to be friendly and on top of their game.

And I should find out today or tomorrow if I am going to Mexico.