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.

Finally, I got home and coerced Margo into helping to make the shop workable. The garage was a storage area for the moving process. So we boxed and sorted and moved to the attic stuff for long term storage. We consolidated chemicals, got clear storage bins from Ikea to put in existing shelving units. And that led to the shop being workable.

It still has latticework were I want there to be walls, no climate control, lights or electricity… but it is moving slowly.

Part of the process of getting there is getting stands and carts for my tools so I’m not lifting them on and off of the Workmate as I need them.

So the first thing I built was a stand for my Jointer/Planer.

When you make furniture, you want the wood to be square, flat and to the proper thickness. That is what the Jointer and planer are for. In a small shop like mine, it is easier and cheaper to buy a multifunction tool that does both. The top part joints the board and makes one side flat. After that, I send it through the bottom of the machine that makes the opposite side coplanar.

I want to put shelves in the unit. I just haven’t gotten that far yet.

After that, I found some plans on the internet and made a stand for my scroll saw.

The scroll saw is for cutting intricate curves. It is sturdy and the carpet should cut down on the vibrations. It is made from 2×4 and 4×4 material.

Which brings me to my first project in the completed shop.

We used to use a cardboard box to hold kitchen supplies like Ziplocs:

Which looked bad, never worked right and mostly was a pain. So Margo got out a lengthometer and drew up a quick plan for me.

I got some 1/4″ and 1/2″ birch plywood from Lowes and some edge veneer to hide the plywood edges. And finished my day with this:

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.

The way the mobiles work here is they are all prepaid and you can always receive calls, but can only make them if you have credit. So none of them have any credit on their phones. They use them to receive calls and texts and play music, but not to make calls because that costs money.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.