Archive for the ‘life’ Category

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When it rains, it pours

Monday, April 5th, 2010

I got an email from Bossman asking if I had a valid visa. That is all. Five minutes later, he asks if I have a valid visa for Saudi.

If I had list the drawbacks to my job, the top of list would be the schedule. I spent three months doing nothing, now they need at least four of me to do the work.

I know. I spent three months at home watching soap operas, staring at the ceiling fan and complaining about how I’ve grown soft and charlie has gotten stronger. Now I’m complaining because I have to work for two months.

So right now, I am either spending April and part of May between Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, or Saudi Arabia. Saudi pays better and is quite probably a job I want to do more. But I’ve started this one. I guess I better get my handover notes ready in case it is short notice.

Hopefully, I can fly to Europe and to Saudi from there. I hate flying African airlines.

Posted in I hate it here, life, 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 »

Lonely days are gone, I’m a goin’ home

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

I’m leaving Vietnam tomorrow.

The oil company was largely staffed by Russians. Which made things irritating. The Geologist asked about how much explosives I used, so I gave him an estimate. At which point he carved it in stone and sent it to his boss. That wanted to know why I used so much compared to another job that was going on at the same time.  I had to explain I just guessed. At which point I was accused of stealing explosives. We sorted that out. But for the entire job I was being asked questions every 10 minutes. Made it incredibly hard to do my job because I had to answering questions or remeasure things.

The rig was nice and new. In three years of operation they haven’t had a single Lost Time Injury. My only complaint was the food was poor and they were absolute jerks about internet, phone and fax use.

Vietnam itself is a pretty country. So far, the people have been very friendly and polite… but occasionally rude in a child like way. Like I’ve had people come up to me an rub me while saying “…white…”, I’ve had my picture taken plenty more times than is normal and I even had a few tell me “You don’t eat a lot for being so fat”

I went to a war museum in Ho Chi Minh City. It used to be called the American War Crimes Museum until about 20 years ago. Now it is the War Remnants Museum.  It is biased in that it only shows what the Americans and South Vietnamese did to the North Vietnamese. But it is a very stark in showing what hell war is. My tour guide said the museum affects Americans the most.

Motorcycles are everywhere and the traffic laws are more like traffic suggestions. But I think that is because up until just a few years ago, nobody had vehicles. Now, they are everywhere. Add to that corrupt police or a lack of police and you get people just zipping around.

The climate reminds me of Louisiana. Hot, humid and rainy.

Posted in Vietnam, life, travel, work | No Comments »

Offshore in Mexico 2

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

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.

Posted in Mexico, life, oilfield, whinging, work | No Comments »

New House!

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

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.

Posted in House, life, married life | No Comments »

Propane and Propane accessories

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

I got a new propane power BBQ pit today. So far I’ve owned two of them. One was a propane unit we got from friends that had been used for charcoal. Which ruined the propane part. It work out, but by the time we got it, the grill had vanished. A replacement grill didn’t quite fit, and it was more likely to drop food in the coals.

The next grill was a 20 dollar Target grill. It lasted about 30 dollars. Eventually, the bit that held the legs rusted out and the whole thing collapsed.

With summer coming, we thought it would be nice to get another grill. I wanted propane powered for ease of use and clean burning. Plus, it is in my personal interests to consume as many hydrocarbons as possible.

I built a doorstopper and wanted to put something on the bottom of it to prevent it from hurting the wood floor. At Ace Hardware buying some felt for the bottom of them, I noticed a few decent looking pits. Today I went to Home Depot and noticed this guy for 200 dollars. A saving of 300 to 400 dollars depending on the vendor.

Awesome. I also had to get a propane tank and a cover for the grill to help protect it against the weather.

Posted in Toys, life | 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 »

Back from offshore

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

And just some random thoughts I wrote down.

I learned something about Russia today. Only Russian Men can handle explosives. It is against the law for a woman to handle explosives in Russia. I’ve been in a few post Soviet countries, I can’t believe we were so afraid of them. Maybe at one point they were a real power, but in the later years it is almost laughable looking at them. You can see the decay that was caused by Soviet era politics and has just gotten worse with time and lack of resources to rebuild or repair.

I don’t know. I read stories about modern day Russia and I think it is what happens if you feed Japan after midnight.

-

Going back to the “no girls aloud” policies of the Russian Federation, One of the things I like about the oilfield is that race and gender don’t matter as long as you can do the work. If you can’t, then it is because you are a worthless minority or woman. It is a weird sort of equality.

That isn’t to say there is no racism. I listened to several people over dinner discuss that if Obama was assassinated, there would be race riots all over the nation because the blacks couldn’t handle it. Not that they are racist, you just know how blacks are.

–

When I was a kid, the quickest way to get fatherly aggro was to drag my feet. I think if Dad came to Angola he would go mental.

I’m not sure why they do it. I think they don’t understand that shoes come in sizes. I had a guy offer to buy my boots. There is no way they would fit him.

Posted in life, oilfield, work | No Comments »

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