Archive for the ‘travel’ 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 »

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 »

Saudi No Internet Super post!

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

I had no internet on the rig, so here is a collection of what I would have said if I’d been able to post.

The toilet has no seat, so I’ve had to squat over it. Which is a bit strange to me.

I had to talk to the crane crew and give them special instructions on how to life my tools to make sure the tools weren’t damaged. I went to the crew and asked if they spoke English. They all said yes. So I gave them the directions on how to lift my tools. At which point, the one that didn’t look bored and was listening intently said “Miiike” and pointed to my name stitched into my coveralls.

There is a local operator I am supposed to be training and helping him get ready to do the job by himself. He will wander off while you are talking to him, has no ability to self motivate and unless you drag him along with you and force him to work, he won’t do anything but sleep all day. I’m starting to call him Mohammed Gump.

I am getting a little irritated that I have to abide by the rules of Ramadan. I’m not Muslim, but it would be like if they came to the US during Lent and we told them to eat fish every Friday or go to jail. Oddly, nobody seems to be offended if they see you doing, but they are quick to tell you that somebody will get offended. It also nice to note that drinking water during the day is offensive, but allowing school girls to burn to death isn’t.

There is an old dog(With a beard!) that wanders around the camp. During the day, he sleeps under the buildings. At night and in the mornings, he sleeps on the sand. Most of the locals want nothing to do with him. It is a sort of sad story. He belonged to an Ex-pat that went back to the US for a month and disappeared. I scratched the dog’s ears once and gave him a piece of chicken and had a new best friend for the whole two weeks.

Speaking of dog, my roommate manages to leave the bathroom smelling like wet dog. Roommate also only reads the Bible and only watches the Passion of the Christ. I thought he was joking about the second one… but no. I saw him watch it at least 5 times.

We were given a satellite phone to use. It has to be outside so it can see the sky. Which is ok, unless there is a sandstorm going on. Which makes it fun trying to give update while spitting out sand. So they put in a phone next to us in our little bat cave. Which is great, except now we are getting calls from everybody wanting to know what is going on. Every three hours, we called Yusef to let him know what is happening. Every hour we got calls from Ryan, Santoshi, Saqib, Chris, Tim, Wayne, Dave, Mohammed, Mohammed, ImRahn, Bater, Gabriel, Sayed, and Bob. And every day somebody was upset that we didn’t tell them. One guy told me I need to call him every hour to tell him what was going on. Except he didn’t tell me his name or number. I’d call our dispatcher to connect me and he would go into a fit wanting to know who was going to pay for the call. It isn’t right that he has to pay for the call. This is one place it takes me roughly three seconds to remember how much I hate it. Normally, it takes a good month for me to get fed up with some place.

I’m leaving tonight and I should be home in a few days. I’m hoping I’m home for a little while, but it sounds like Nigeria might be on the horizon.

Posted in I hate it here, Saudi Arabia, oilfield, travel, work | No Comments »

Eating Cobra in Vietnam

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Before we went offshore, we spent the night in Danang.  Since Van Dam was there and speaks Vietnamese, we asked him to take us to get some proper local food.

 

We went to a restaurant and had an assortment of local dishes. After, Van Dam says there is some special we can have, but it is expensive and he wanted to know if I’d pay for it. I said sure and he went away and had a discussion with one of the staff.

 

Out comes and older man with a Sponge Bob pillow case.  The man has three fingers on his right hand. He has three fingers because he reaches into the pillow case that happens to be filled with cobras.

He snatched one out of it and pulled out a knife. As his helper pours us shots of whiskey, Cobraman cuts the snake open and pours some blood into every glass.  He starts to cut up the snake and my glass gets the still beating cobra heart inside of it like a macabre olive.

I’m told it is a high honor to drink this and that every part of the snake is magical. I may have ruined the moment by yelling “COBRAA!” instead of the proper cheer that sounded like “Roy”

I feel lucky. One guy got cobra penis in his.

 

It tasted rubbery and I could psychosomatically feel the heart beating as it went down and in my stomach later.

 

On the plus side, I can now check “Eat the still beating heart of a reptile” off of my bucket list.

Posted in Vietnam, funny, oilfield, travel, work | 2 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 »

Vietnamese Medical Exam

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

This morning, I went to get my Vietnamese Medical Exam to make sure I am fit to go offshore. They didn’t like my other one because it is almost 4 years old. So one of the secretaries took me down to the VSP hospital. VSP is the oil company, Vietsovpetro. Anything stick out about that name or logo?

Yeah… So most of the signs are in Russian, the building is clearly communist influenced, and the procedures are very…Russian.

My last medical took me 30 minutes and I saw one doctor. This one took 4 hours.

The area was all open air. There were rooms, All the doors opened out to a sidewalk. Like a motel.

I stopped at window one and got a form. After some discussion, I got a form in English. And worked my way down to Window 8. Getting stamps and extra forms and paying. From there, we went to get some bloodwork done.  Two nurses and three doctors stabbed me a dozen times in 8 locations and worked the needle around to find a vein.  And gave me a 50ml test tube to pee in. So I went to a bathroom 500 feet away that smelled awful and tried to pee in such a small tube. I didn’t do so hot. And no paper towels. So I had to walk back to the test room with open tube of wee I manged to get it all over the tube and my hands. Thy took this, grunted and stamped my paper.

From there, I went to another room. A doctor showed up, had me take off my shirt and raise my arms. He grunted and stamped my paper.

I went to another room. I had to do a vision test. Basic stuff, but one neat thing was they had a vision chart that had pictograms on it because of the illiteracy rate. My chart was the basic kind. I read the lowest line, She grunted and stamped my form. I walked across her little room and sat in another chair where a lady shined a flashlight in my eyes. She grunted and stamped my form.

I go to another room. Do the turn and cough. The doctor took out his aggression against Americans by squeezing way harder than is normal. He grunted and stamped my form.

Off to another room, I sit in a dental chair… my teeth get poked and prodded. She grunted and stamped my form. Directs me to another chair where a guy shoves something up each nostril so he can look up there, looks at my ears and makes me say ahh while jamming a tongue depresser in my mouth. He grunted and signed my form.

I go to another room. The doctor looks at me and asks if I get dizzy. I tell him no. He grunts and stamps my paper.

Another room, another doctor. This one makes me take off my shirt, slaps my back with something and grunts. He stamps my form and waves me to another room.

Another doctor shows up, listens to me with a stethoscope for a few minutes. He has me beat my chest like Tarzan while he listens.  He grunts and stamps my form. I’m starting to wonder if they are just jerking me around.

I go from there to the X-ray room. Huge line here. While we are waiting, an ambulance pulls up and drops off a stretcher with a woman that is clearly injured and totally blissed out on painkillers.

The X-ray tech(Who was incredibly pretty and incredibly unhappy with her job) directs me to the X-Ray machine. Makes me take off my shirt and press up against the machine. She took my X-ray, I went to look at the machine. Jokingly I said “No cancer?”She puffed up and said “You good. My machine no cause cancer!” She scowled, grunted and stamped my form.

Stretcher lady was still outside. From there I went to get an ECG. The doctor had me lay down and she stuck all the sensors on me and plugged me into the machine. After 10 minutes, she pulled off all sensors, grunted stamped my form and showed me to another room. And turned off the lights. After about 5 minutes of the weirdest psychological warfare, another doctor comes in. She has me take off my shirt and lay done. She rubs quite a lot of lube on my belly and starts using an ultrasound on me. She grunted and stamped my form. I left the room and stretcher lady is still outside, 30 minutes after being dropped off.

I go from there back to front part of the hospital and get a hearing test. After a bit of confusion with the rules, we get it sorted. Doctor grunts and stamps my form. And that is it. After 4 hours, the best medical minds in Vung Tau have decided I wear glasses and I am fat.

I also found out I am blood group “O”. I’d give blood but I am pretty sure mine they don’t want it.

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

Names

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

I’ve had an assistant working with me for two weeks now. I just found out his name is Van Dam. Which is cool. Sadly, I’ve been calling him Benjamin for two weeks.

He is Vietnamese, but it isn’t uncommon for a national to have an anglicized name either because they are tired of their name being mispronounced, They are given it is a nickname, their name sounds close or their parents actually named them that because it sounding cool. I’m not kidding. I worked with a Malaysian of Chinese decent named Nicholas.

His coveralls and hardhat said Benjamin, so I called him Benjamin. He never corrected me and he responded to it. So… I assumed it was Benjamin. Nope. Van Dam Nguyen. I feel a little bad,  but he never told me different.

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

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