Archive for the ‘Africa’ Category

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My laptop was almost stolen

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

At the airport in Accra, you go through security right at the gate. I went through security and did the whole routine. Took off my shoes, took out my laptop, put my bag on the conveyor, put any and all metallic objects in a small plastic container. Fed them through the machine and walked through the metal detector.

A security guard frisked me because the metal detector was broken. I went through that and went over to the machine and started to gather my belongings. The guy in front of me grabbed my laptop and tried to put it in his bag. I grabbed a hold on my laptop and held on to it. He gave it a pull and looked at me. I held it and looked at him. He let go and apologized saying he thought it was his.

Which would be a little more believable if he would have had a laptop to start with.

Posted in Africa, Freaking Airlines, I hate it here, electronics, oilfield, travel, work | No Comments »

It isn’t always exciting.

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

Just the parts I normally talk about.

Last night, we went a place we call Blue Bar because it is painted a bright blue. I’m not really sure what the actual name is.

We had curried rice, grilled fish and fried plantains. We chatted for a little bit and left.

I told you it wasn’t exciting.

Next to the blue bar is a massage place. They have a menu. A Number One is a regular massage, a Number Two is a massage with a happy ending and a Number Three is a massage with a happier ending.

I’ve never been, but two of the guys went there and got their Number One’s. While they were doing that, the manager came in and said “Your friend wants an upgrade and said you would pay for it”. They both paid an extra 20,000 CFA and only later did they find out that neither had asked for an upgrade and the manager had scammed them.

Posted in Africa, I hate it here, Ivory Coast, life, oilfield, travel, work | No Comments »

Some of you may have seen this already

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

A few days ago, we went to a French African Country & Western bar. The food was pretty terrible. There, we met X-man and Rastafarian Robocop. By met I mean they wouldn’t go away.

From there, we went to a few different Reggae bars and met some members of the French Foreign Legion, who don’t think jokes about getting shanghaied into the Foreign Legion while drunk are very funny at all.

Rastafarian Robocop said he knew of a better place because it was too early for Parker Place to really get going. So we went to what turned out to be a strip bar with a few Legionnaires. Some of the girls didn’t bother getting dressed and just walked around naked. Oddly, the girls weren’t as predatory as they are in not-strip clubs. This is the reason a few companies hold their Friday meetings there.

Around 11, I went back to the hotel. I was mostly doing it to be social and as things broke up and got drunker, I lost interest, and snuck away. A few guys took parting gifts from the strip club and moved on to other places. X-man went in the alley with a girl and Rastafarian Robocop toked up with a few police men and we left them in the parking lot shooting bottles off the top of the police car.

Posted in Africa, I hate it here, Ivory Coast, life, oilfield, travel, work | No Comments »

I keep forgetting I have a blog.

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

Last night, we went to the Cuban place with some guys from another service company. Some of them brought their local girlfriends.

The conversation got turned to local animals and they started talking about how dangerous and aggressive hippos are. One of the locals says that hippos are the number one killer in Africa.

I say “I thought it was AIDS”. The nationals didn’t laugh. The expats with national girlfriends didn’t laugh. Everybody else did.

After that, we went to a bar named Jimmy’s. It was expensive as fuck. At a local bar, beer costs about 800 CFA. At the hotel and bars expats go to, about 2,000 to 2,500 CFA. At Jimmy’s they are 4,000. So I had a beer before discreetly leaving.

Or tried to. Since two of my coworkers spent or lost all their per diem in one day, I offered to buy them a drink and bought the drink of Miriam, the girl that latched on to me.

For those that don’t frequent developing world bars, Normally there are several local girls there and they will latch on to any foreigner that walks into the door. You can either be nice to them, buy them a drink, and put up with their “I love you!” games, or you can be a jackass and call them whores, treat them like shit and yell at them.

You can either buy one girl a beer and she will keep the other girls away, or be an ass and fight off girls the whole night.

Miriam was very pretty. I’m not normally into black girls(RACEST!), but this one was hot.

She asked if I wanted a girlfriend. I told her no. When she asked why, I showed her my wedding leash and said I don’t do that. Which she told me was a very good thing because lots of married men come to Ivory Coast and get girlfriends.

I told her that I know that and I’m not that sort. But she still kept trying. She offered to go dance for me. While she was dancing, I left.

But as I watched the other expats, I realized why these places are popular. Most of these guys are divorced or on wife number two or three. Middle aged or older and when you come to one of these places you have hot young women throwing themselves at you. It allows these guys a little bit of escapism and a chance to reclaim the ideal of their youth.

Like Disneyland, but with more STD’s.

Posted in Africa, I hate it here, life, oilfield, travel, work | No Comments »

Containers 2 Clinics

Saturday, March 21st, 2009

I’ve taken pictures of container houses. I’ve seen some of the DIY blogs I read gush enthusiastically about them. But they also don’t live in one.  They are depressing, dank, dark and not even close to a place humans should live in.

But this is neat. It makes it easy to ship clinics to parts of the world that may not get them and could be used for rapid deployment to refugee camps.

Posted in Africa, Links | No Comments »

Back from Africa

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

I made it back from Africa. No problems getting out. I saw a stuffed Ostrich. The airport also had cans of Zebra meat. But I didn’t buy any. It may have been a good thing. The US Customs guy really wanted to make sure I didn’t have meat in my bag.

I was supposed to go be in Colombia on the 14th.  But the job moved up and they wanted me there on the 9th. I wouldn’t have made it. So the boss said I may go to either Saudi Arabia or Azerbaijan. But he isn’t sure when. I hope he makes a decision soon. I will need more pages in my passport  pretty soon.

Posted in Africa, oilfield, travel, work | No Comments »

The cats here

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

A cat walked up to me at the shop yesterday. So I reached down to pet it. Malnutrition and evolution makes the cats a little runty here.  One thing I noticed was that this little cat is all muscle. Unlike American cats and their owners with a layer of give, this cat was rock hard.

Unrelated, but since the staffhouse has skelton keys, I tried the old Movie trick of pushing the Skeleton key out with a bit of paper. It doesn’t appear to work on this lock. Once the key gets past a certain point, it binds up and gets stuck.

Posted in Africa | No Comments »

Funeral in Angola

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

We passed a funeral today. Unlike in the US, an Angola funeral procession includes standing in the road with knives, sticks and axes and asking every passing car for money.

I didn’t know this and got a little worried about being surrounded. In the dark. By a bunch of Angolans with sharp pointy things.

Posted in Africa, life, travel | No Comments »

Training Africans

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Part of my job duties include training locals to do my job. The problem is, I’m training idiots.

We have formulas we use for the job. A common need is changing the hydrostatic. Hydrostatic is the weight of a column of fluid and we tell them how many barrels of a lighter fluid they need to put down a well to displace the heavier fluid and lower the hydrostatic.

I show a local the formula that is used.

Take the depth, 10747 feet times 0.052 times the fluid weight(11.4 pounds per gallon) That gives you the Hydrostatic of 6370. The customer wants a hydrostatic of 5462. We need to displace 909 psi. So we subtract the fluid weights, 11.4 minus 6.8 gives us a fluid difference of 4.6. Multiply that by .052 an we get a fluid gradient of 0.2392. Divide the PSI we need to displace 909psi by the fluid gradient or 0.2392 and that gives us 3800 feet of pipe we need to displace. Multiply that number by the amount of barrels per foot of the pipe(3800 * 0.0073) and we get 27.75 barrels.

Sambo(This actually is his name) creates his own formula and gets 11. When I explain that isn’t even close to right, he adjusts his formula so that he multiplies the 11 by 3. Which gives him the still wrong answer of 33. I don’t think he is going to take my job anytime soon.

Posted in Africa, oilfield, work | No Comments »

Laundry in the Thunderdome

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

I’m not sure how they wash clothes, but it seems like I give them two bits of laundry, I get one back. Or there is a guy in town that is my size.

Posted in Africa, work | No Comments »

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