Flo, over and out

Wednesday morning held a surprise...10cm of snow! and a cold bitter wind. Well at least it looked a bit more like the Siberia I know. Plus mud. Loads and loads of it...


After doing the morning report and my final morning meeting RJ and I went to pack and made sure everything was in order in the work caravan. We both wanted to get back to Base ASAP but Roy wanted to do his driving licence and knowing what that can be like,I had agreed to take him to CPF and have a shower while he did the test. We were due to meet Sasha K there, who was going to pick up his tripsheet (finally!!) and was going to be Roy's translator. So far, so good.

The trek to the car though, was no fun at all. What a struggle-the sandy mud just seemed to have liquified all over the pad after the cementing truck-solifaction would be the word I think. Anyway, somehow made it to the car after almost loosing my boots and bags.







Never been so happy to see the Niva!








We made it to the CPF a little late and stocked up on petrol while Sasha and Roy went to sort out the driving. A waste of time later, they came back really angry with a) no trip sheet for Sasha, who hadn't had a health check the day before (?!) and b) no test for Roy because the instructor decided to use his *power* and change the time of the test...well well, my best friend in action again...




So we started the long and arduous drive back to Base...soon enough the dieti in the back were fast asleep and RJ was kindly chatting to me so I wouldn't fall asleep. Although the state of the road did keep me awake for the last 25 km...complete rallye conditions, with mud spraying everywhere and some controlled skidding...Niva challenge to the end!!






Finally in BC, got some lunch and a nice shower after which I hid in the SSFT 1 caravan with Radik and Max in order to finish off the work I had to do for Bert. Time seemed to fly as I ran around the place trying to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything/anyone. Vlada had organised some goodbye cakes for Simon and me so we tucked into those before it was time time to go...

There was a pretty good turn-out of people despite the awful weather...goodbye Sergey A, Sasha K, Luc, Vlada, CJ, Radik, Vassya, Bert...and hopped onto the bus with Simon, Max, Slava (DSV), Reginald, Gert-Jan, Vitaly and Ravil. The bus took us direct to Surgut, which was a relief when it came to bags as the body bag was back inbusiness, as well as a normal bag (note: I had 3 when I arrived! Much better...but...still). For some reason Reg did not seem to want to even hear of my bags this time ;-)


Eventually arrived in Surgut at 21.45 and after dumping bags in the room and relaxing a bit, went up to the bar to have dinner and drinks with Max and Ravil. It turned into a pretty long evening...I learnt Russian Billiards (taught by Max-it is really difficult) and Alexey turned up on the way back to his next shift, so that was fun. Went to bed at 3am...and up at 5.15 :-(


Enjoyed the caviar on UTAir :-) and crashed out for the rest of the flight. Plan for the day was to go into Moscow with Ravil and meet up with Sasha A for lunch. Which is exactly what we did after having left our luggage and Reg (separately!) at the airport. I had booked myself onto the later flight at 9pm to avoid any repeat of last time's drama :-)







Ravil in front of the Historical Museum







We headed into town on the train and went to Tverskaya metro stop, where we got out and walked towards the Red Square. Tverskaya street is an expensive shopping street, and it was nice looking at the expensive cars lined up in the street (a far cry from the lovely Nivas) while eating ice-cream in the sun.
Came to the Red Square, which for some reason was cordoned off. It was great to make it to such a landmark...wasn't tempted by the Lenin mausoleum though. Tried to absorb the view/feel of the place, the Kremlin and the Cathedral...and took some photos on the antiquated camera. which I shall be developing very soon (promise).







Here they are! The Kremlin (and two random ladies posing in front of the cathedral :-(











A better view of the square with St Basil's Cathedral, the Kremlin and a piece of GUM shopping centre on the left












We then headed to the Alexander gardens and back over to Manejnaya, a relaxed square with the Central Exhibition Hall on the end of it.

Sasha got in touch and we agreed to meet on the way to the Arbat. We first walked through the Novy (New) Arbat and then onto the old Arbat, which is where we stopped to have lunch and a drink. It was very interesting to walk down this street which is well-known for its street artists and its cafes. There were a lot of tourist stalls too, selling the usual stuff as well as some Cheburashkas...I almost bought a fluffy Gena crocodile but resisted the temptation ;-)
Unfortunately Ravil has his eyes closed on the Arbat photo so I won't post it here :-)

After a nice relaxed lunch it was time to head back to catch the 3pm train in time for Ravil to make his 5:30 flight. Tried the BA desk and they eventually gave me a seat on the flight after someone cancelled which was nice as it cut out a rather long wait in the airport. Reg was quite surprised to see me swan in 15 min later!!

Until now, the whole trip back had just felt like I was going off-shift, as always feeling happy about the time/work in the field but very much looking forward to going home. Saying goodbye to Ravil in the airport, though, the finality of it hit me pretty hard and it was quite a struggle keeping it together through customs and during the flight home (not exactly much privacy in BA business on that route). I cannot believe this whole adventure is over...

I am now home, trying to recover from it all (still in the usual 1-week recovery mode but with rather more this time) and generally feeling a bit fragile emotionally. I had no idea when I headed out to this tough and alien environment (and it feels like yesterday) that I would grow to love it so much and meet such amazing people. I guess these things always catch you when you are least expecting them. It has been an inspiration so see how hard people work out there, how important it is to be part of a close team and how well a true mix of cultural values and local experience can work. I have been lucky to learn a lot about Russian culture and its people, and have come to love some of what I have found there. I feel there is still hope for Russia while it has such great people...but then, is there really hope for these people in Russia? Only time will tell, but let's hope that spirit does not get choked by the inert masses and boxed-in world views...

It is going to take a while to get over my amazing adventure but in the meantime I really need to thank everyone out in Salym for looking after me, teaching me so much and accepting into their community this rather random geologist girl being flown in from central offices miles away. In particular I will never forget the support, patience, understanding and friendship given to me so generously by Pasha, Gilles, Ravil, Sasha A, Sasha K, Sergey A and Marc.
And of course, things would just not have been the same without Sergey R, Radik, Anna, Vlada, Alexey, Denis, Vavan and even our drillers in caravan 2 :-) Yes, Buyanov, that includes you!!

Finally, thank you dear readers for your interest in my time in Siberia and all my random thoughts and feelings. It has been great getting people's feedback and comments on the blog...

I have decided to keep this blog open as it is such a nice way to keep in touch with friends and family around the world. And of course I have become rather addicted to writing here so I need an excuse to keep doing it (by the way I will be back-posting a bit for this last shift-will let you know as I do it).

I think I might rename it Florence's Journeys though as that seems to cover rather more than just physical travelling.


And of course...who knows just what the future holds?

36 hours to go...

and I can't quite get my head round it.

I want one

wonder if I could get a trip sheet? :-D

Car thief

well well well. The rest of the world might as well know-my car thieving tendencies have just been exposed to the whole of the Basecamp community by my friends Sergey and Ravil...hrmph.
When we were driving to CPF yesterday I didn't have a tripsheet as we had left too late on Friday night for me to get one. I was going to get one on arrival at the CPF before going on (obviously). And..yes, for the first time ever, I got stopped...asked for my tripsheet...oops. So much for the squeaky clean driving record...
I did a very good job of pretending to not understand what he was telling me while speaking English very fast but it didn't stop him from reporting me as a vehicle thief! (which is what happens when you are found with a car and no tripsheet). And it has just hit basecamp now...I am being msn'd from several quarters...argh

What a beautiful day!

Getting up this morning, I remembered exactly why I get a kick out of this job. After extracting myself from my bed with difficulty at 6.20 I opened the front door to be greeted by brilliant sunshine and crisp fresh air. The rig was drilling away and the ground was frozen-take that, mud!


There was a lot of work to do this morning preparing Winlog/the morning report in time for the morning meeting-as per Bert's request, this needs to be in before 7.55 so they can use it during the meeting. It is nice to know the report is being used, but...anyway this morning I was teaching Roy how to put everything together but we ran out of time so I had to go for a manic rush at the end and sent the report through at 7:54-I guess I can teach him that last bit tomorrow ;-)

The morning meetings here are a bit of a struggle as the DSV does not really speak English so a lot of the translation gets lost somewhere down the phone line and although I can pick up a bit of the Russian it is not ideal. But it is important to be there to answer questions, like this morning about the logging.

After the meeting we came back and polished off the Winlog for the previous conductor section in time for lunch. After which, the boys went to bed to get some rest (we are going to be logging tonight) and I was just on the phone when I ran into Bert and Yuri who were on their weekly rig visit, so I joined them and had a cuppa while they had lunch. Had a pleasant chat once they had finished winding me up about coming back to a real job ;-) then came back here in time to watch lots of mud action-yes, the sun has melted the ice and things are getting quite sticky again (though without the rain adding to it it doesn't seem quite as insurmountable).






Piotr is stuck! Endless entertainment from the geo-wagonchik.













but at least it's not like the road to pad 10...

Excursion on a miserable day

Yesterday was a thoroughly miserable day weather-wise. Getting up early was made harder by the sound of rain gushing off the roof of the wagonchik into our private lake...and the walk to the work caravan took a good 10 minutes.
Roy was very tired so we let him sleep in and I showed Robert Jan how to do the geo-report. There hadn't been any drilling the day before so it was pretty straightforward and we headed over to the morning meeting in good time. Beforehand I decided to drop by the DSV's office as I did not know him (he is new and our only contact so far had been an email I sent). I knew he didn't speak much English so I introduced myself and Robert in Russian. Picture this " Hello, my name is Florence, I am the geologist here, nice to meet you" "You?!" "Err yes..!...and this is Robert, who is learning about what geologists do" "ah OK, thanks". Hmm. Interesting way to start.

During the day, we worked on finishing up a lot of the documents that needed doing and I ran Roy through a few procedures etc. In the late afternoon, Roy wanted to go to the gym at the CPF so I agreed to drive him there while sneakily timing it just right for...hockey later ;-) Robert Jan came too and we decided to go on to pad 26 where he wanted to collect some of his smart wells data.

After dropping Roy off we headed off down the muddy but still acceptable road to pad 26. I really enjoyed the tougher bits as I am starting to master driving in the mud a bit...but the road to pad 10, which is currently closed (with people stuck on pad 10!!) did look rather daunting...

It was interesting to see Robert's work on pad 26 - he downloaded the data collected on a PCMCIA card to his laptop, and checked the results there and then. Last week, he had explained to me all about the work he does on Smart Wells so it was great to see how this translates in the field.

Once this was done we headed back to CPF just in time for the hockey semi-final...where Russia lost in extra time to Finland :-(( ah well, it all had to end some time...saw Tom the SLB engineer there and caught up a bit which was nice though I think I scared him a little when explaining hockey rules and players to him...

After dinner (my first at CPF would you believe it) we headed back to the rig and started wading through some (mud and) work. We were all getting rather tired and thinking about bedtime when the trainee DSV burst in announcing that CBL logs were being run in slots 1 and 2 and did we need anything from them? Well guys, thanks for the warning! A minor panic and super-fast timebreakdown generation later I gave him some papers to take over and explained what we needed (new CBL crew) - that, unfortunately, was after having had to check with Ravil to find out if they were doing a conductor CBL only to realise that they had already been done...DSV had given us the wrong slots.

At 1am we got the logs and finally went to bed...

Back to Rig 3/Pad 3

On Friday, after getting woken up at 13:15 by the fire alarm (almost like student days...except 12 hours later/earlier) I had lunch and packed all my stuff-a bit for the rig, leaving the big black bag in Base.
I then did a few hours' work until dinner, following which we had a class on cementing from Reginald, which was very interesting as it helped link together a lot of the information picked up on the rig. This went on till 8.30, after which I still had to finish gathering bits, bobs and geologists before setting off for rig 3, where I am due to spend my last few days.
As it was pretty late I couldn't get a trip sheet for the car so drove without one, which wasn't a problem as we didn't get stopped.
Dropped Malinki Sasha off at pad 50 then drove on to rig 3 with Roy (my new B2B) and Robert Jan (I'm sure I've mentioned him before; he's a PT who wanted to see what real work looks like).
The trudge through the mud in the pouring rain was pretty dire, especially as it was close to midnight; luckily Roy helped me with my bag else I might have actually lost my boots for good...
So, back and happy to be here despite the difficult conditions...

Learning

I have been learning a lot about PT work and my time as a PT tagger-along is coming to an end. But it has been really useful to help me understand what goes on next and the links between understanding the reservoir, modelling it and seeing and learning from what happens in the field.

Today I learnt about Water Injection and it is definitely an area where a lot of things are up in the air, and the uncertainty on the models is high. However it is an important area as it affects future production so much. For example, if you inject too fast, the water doesn't displace the oil but travels straight through to the oil well and you end up producing water that you have just injected. But if you don't inject enough then you lose oil production.
By the way, the size of the pumps in the injection station is that of a medium-sized car.

What I especially like about the last couple of weeks is that I have actually had time to record all my learnings and think about them for a while, which has really helped with assimilation. I have never really had a chance to do this, only plan to, and I hope I will be able to do it again in the future-unless someone invents human RAM in the meantime.

Off to a perforation shortly :-)

Victory Day

It is Victory Day today in Russia, celebrating the WW2 victory over the Germans.
There have been a host of war films on TV over the last few days and a lot of German jokes...the Deutag caravan is a bit of a target ;-)
Here is a picture of the poster on our door:




"Fascists can't escape us-we will hunt them down to their (bear) dens"
















Apart from that, I have been teaching our charming but rather impractical TA Vlada how to re-pot a plant...(please don't ever mention gravel to me again)
















and today saw a bunch of people leaving on crew change, including my good friend Pasha-the-DSV... :-(( and his side-kick Sergey the Hoist Supervisor. The Rig 4 Magic Team legend will live on...:-) I know I was lucky to work with Pasha as he was so easy to communicate and get along with, which really helped when I started out on my own and when I was really really tired sometimes. Another big part of my life here...

Hockey

I am developing into an ice-hockey fan!
What started as a casual interested in such a large part of the Russian sports culture has become rather more...after a few matches I am hooked.
Last night saw Russia beat Sweden-one of the more important matches- and it had me on the edge of my chair. I still don't understand all the rules but enough to know what is a good and what is a bad game. And, not having a national team to support, I can happily find myself chanting Ra-ssi-ya! Ra-ssi-ya! without any guilt whatsoever.

The Disadvantage of Being a Girl

I've had a pretty good day, starting with a cheeky lie-in (finally!!) and typing up some notes on what I have been learning from the PTs.
In the afternoon, Ravil, Vitaly and Andrey (PT) announced they were going out to pad 1A to look at the water injection plant there. I was about to start having a cuppa with Luc and on impulse asked Vitaly if i could tag along...request granted :-)
It was very interesting to see the water injection pumps and how everything was connected. Very briefly, here is the idea: it is important to keep pressure up in an oil reservoir, so it keeps producing its oil. But if you start taking enough oil out, pressure is going to drop as there is less fluid in the same space. So to keep up pressure we can inject water into the reservoir, and wells are drilled following a special pattern with this concept in mind.
The water needs to be pumped along to the injector wells and into the reservoir at high pressure; this means you need large pumps which heat up the water and bring it to high pressures.
The water in this case is currently coming from some of our existing wells; it then goes into a couple of large separators (which we got a chance to examine) which separate gas from the water, then into a small centrifuging machine that separates out any particles and finally through into the main pump. The water is distributed through a pipeline to all water injector wells in the field.
Cleverly I completely forgot to take the camera so have no photos to illustrate this, but it has been really helpful for visualising how this kind of set-up works. I remember vaguely looking at some diagrams of similar installations during EP00 and dismissing it as the most boring topic ever, but I have now revised my opinion!
Anyway, ran into Jim, head of ops, after dinner (less than an hour after getting back) and he started winding me up about going onto one of his sites without an HSE induction. He caught me completely by surprise! Clearly news travels fast and they don't get visits from devushki very often so they noticed I had never been to this pad before...oh to be a man sometimes (very rarely) (almost never)...

French Elections

I have just seen that Sarko has won-well at least a disaster has been avoided...
So now, bring on le Status Quo...

Sad

I have just said goodbye to Gilles and am feeling a little emotional.
Yes, I am sure we will stay in touch, but for now it really is the end of something.
Gilles is the person who has really made my time here what it has been-he has taken interest in me, tested me, pushed me and watched me bounce back. He has taught me a mountain of important lessons, the importance of being human yet organised and efficient, firm but fair; and confirmed to me that you can be honest, driven and passionate and really succeed in business. Finally, he has given me the chance to be myself 100% and really think about what I want from my job.
Onwards and upwards, I will always keep what I found here with me, wherever I go...

Slightly mad day

yesterday, but I ended up getting stuff done somehow.
I finished up all my AAR and XPT documents as well as my penultimate Performance Review draft before lunch, which I was quite happy about as these things seem to take ages to do.
After lunch Marc and Marina arrived from SLB-Marina will be replacing Marc as he moves on to a different position and this was the start of their handover.
I was really happy to see Marc again as I had come to the conclusion that this would not happen, especially as he has not been in the field out here for a while. We had a good chat about the XPT procedure which I have been working on, and which I am now final-finalising before Gilles leaves tonight.
I was also a little sad because it meant yet another goodbye to someone who has been a big influence during my time here. It is such a nice luxury to work with someone so enthusiastic about their work, who is willing to give you so much despite having a hard job to do-when working with Marc I always had the feeling I could understand anything, explanations were there to be taken and he would be happy to explain things in detail until I (finally) ran out of questions...and now I have him to blame for my XPT obsession ;-)
In the evening I had a really good session with Ravil where he spent 2 hours explaining in depth the way PT work fits into the bigger picture and the different aspects of production technology, especially completion, which is what happens straight after drilling. It has really helped make a lot of things clear and brought together a lot of information I have been picking up here and there. And of course all the time I have spent with the other PTs seeing what they are doing. I am looking forward to my next lesson with such a helpful and thorough teacher.
Back to polishing off these docs then (and some PT stuff in between)...only 4 hours left with Gilles...I will try to catch up properly with blogging tomorrow.

Working in Basecamp

Just thought I would post a few pics of life here...before the whole of basecamp moves to the CPF some time next week. Obviously things are quite different and rather more comfortable here, and there is a lot more interaction with people all the time, as the main caravan I am sitting in has a constant stream of visitors.
Which I love, as it means I get a really good feel for what is going on, although it does make it a bit difficult to work sometimes.




with Vassily (junior geologist), Andrey and Vavan
enjoying the sunshine












with Radik, Sergey A, Gilles and Sergey R















My desk













With Tofig (Well Engineering) and Gilles

Good managers

Last night, Harry (CEO) came round to the geologist's caravan to have a chat with Gilles about the geology, our latest wells, and the way we operate here in the field...and the future of the company in the rest of Russia, whether the kind of difference we make here and the best practice examples will be enough to convince the authorities that this model is a good one and should be replicated...
I must admit I am very impressed with this guy-apart from being a geologist :-) he seems very switched on and is a very good communicator (which is quite rare for someone of his nationality). It is nice to see people like that in this kind of position-reminds me why I joined this company in the first place...

HSE

After 1 million man hours without LTI (Lost Time Injury), which is a pretty good safety record, we sadly have had 2 fatalities in a month- one a road accident, where the driver smashed into a heavy lorry on the federal road, and the other 2 days ago when a 16m-scaffold fell down with a contractor on it. This of course is a very sad occurrence and a great shame after all this time operating safely.
Today, the CEO came to basecamp and just did a talk about the situation.
Awful circumstances aside, it was interesting to see how the management team is dealing with this situation, informing staff and stakeholders and how the problems are explained. Whether the extra entreaties to work safely will be heard I do not know, but I was very impressed with the delivery. Far more relevant and human than any HSE review meeting I have been to so far-although of course there have been no office fatalities as yet.
Something to mull over.

Software

I am just discovering Mozilla/Firefox. Nice...

Crew change

Today was crew change day so I had to say some goodbyes...

I have been taking people photos over the last couple of days, here are some with Oleg and Amit (PTs) and Anna, who all left today.

with Oleg-now I know everything there is to know about ESPs! (electric submersible pumps, which are used to help bring the oil to the surface)

with Amit - completely rubbish weather today, it actually snowed overnight and is now raining and windy and about 1 degree :-(

with Anna, integral part of the superteam in caravan 1!

Time flies...

I have finally decided to just write this offline and post it later, so that I can do it in my own time and catch up with the week. I cannot believe another week has flown by…

Starting again where I left off:

Andrey, the Schlumberger engineer, eventually came round with the data and after a few changes we signed the acceptance papers and I made my way back to Basecamp. Unfortunately it was dinner time so I didn’t eat again, but I had a collection of fruit in my room so that was fine. I got back in time to catch the second half of Touching the void, a documentary film about a couple of glacier climbers who got stuck and the extreme survival of one of them who pulled himself out of a crevasse and down the mountain with a broken leg! Amazing…and quite moving too.

The next morning, Alexey noticed that some data was missing from the logs…eek! Basically I asked SLB for the wrong logging interval and the engineer didn’t double-check it (I misread the depth because the program had changed). We had all the reservoir data though so it wasn’t too much of a problem but it was a bit of a wake-up call for me to pay more attention to the job. I find it quite tough to just drop in on a well without knowing it from drilling, so it requires a lot more concentration to get it right. Gilles asked for a small AAR (after action review) document on this so that this kind of mistake could be avoided in the future, also from the SLB side (they didn’t quite follow standard procedure in this case).

After discussing this issue with Alexey, I left for pad 3 to help Simon with his PEX-XPT job. Incidentally, communication with Alexey has improved a lot since my second shift-it was already a lot better last shift and this time I found it very helpful to be sitting in the same office as him on that level…I could just hit him over the head with a log if he started annoying me :-)

After pad 50, which was very well maintained with sand all over, pad 3 was a bit of a struggle as it was very muddy with large ruts. I decided to not even try getting in and parked at the entrance by the security cabin. It was pretty difficult walking over to the geologist’s caravan but I made it without letting mud in over the top of my boots. I did get stuck on the way to the SLB unit though and Denis-the-DSV had to rescue me :-)

The engineer was Andrey again and after discussing the depth problem from yesterday we got on with the job. We went through all the XPT procedure and made sure we were all clear about what we needed from each other. For this XPT job, another engineer, Serge, was there and although he hadn’t done XPT before he has a lot of experience with pressure testing (just slightly different tools) so it was really interesting talking to him.
Denis stayed in the unit with us which was nice; in this well the drillers decided not to do a wiper trip to clean the hole before logging, because there was a power shutdown planned for the next day and they wanted to save time and finish work on the well before it. Bad idea…we couldn't get into the hole so had to pull out and they had to do the wiper trip anyway…obviously this meant staying in pad 3 for me, which was nice as I could catch up with people and of course the cleaners made up my bed nicely straight away (the Deutag magic).
Next day, we started over again and this time, after a couple of small struggles, we managed to get in and log the hole. At this stage Andrey and I were starting to get the giggles at it seemed that we were having a bit of a Groundhog Day-especially when it turned out that another tool needed calibrating!
After that everything went smoothly with the PEX and XPT, although we were a bit worried before the job about getting stuck with the XPT tool due to the poor hole conditions. We applied all the new procedure a la lettre though and did not have any problems as we took the XPT measurements, except with the penultimate point where the cable tension got really high- almost to snapping point. There were an amazing 20 seconds in the logging cabin where no-one breathed as the operator tried to free the cable...luckily he managed and a lot of pale, shaky-kneed people heaved a sigh of relief!
Because Serge had never done XPT and Andrey didn't have that much experience they were asking me about testing rates and volumes, which was great fun :-) obvioulsy I made it clear the responsibility was theirs but they basically let me pick all the sampling volumes and rates for the points :-) with a bit of guidance on the tight formations (ie the ones where liquid doesn't flow very easily or at all). Basically what we measure is the formation pressure, by sucking out liquid from it and waiting for the pressure to stabilise again; the time this takes depends on how well fluid can move through the formation and therefore the amount taken and the speed at which you take it can really influence how well the pressure stabilises.
Anyway, another XPT job happily finished and we went back to the work unit to wait for the data from SLB. Simon had been bringing me food throughout the day, which was nice, as I didn't have time to leave the logging unit at mealtimes.

I decided to go to the car to get my book and some bits from my bag, to help with the wait for the data. Unfortunately on the way back the digger was working in the only path I knew so I had to work out another route back to the unit. My friend the moustachied digger driver(for it was he) saw me waiting and pointed me towards a dry-ish path which I followed happily until it was time to cut across to the unit. And then...it all went terribly wrong! after 2 steps I ended up completely bogged down with mud to the top of my boots :-( luckily for me, the digger was still nearby and the driver staged a rescue worthy of a princess :-) and I eventually made it back safely to the work unit.

I found Pasha near the DSV's office as he is living in pad 3 while rig 4 moves, so spent a bit of time relaxing with a nice cup of tea and ice cream :-) then back to the unit to wish Simon a happy birthday at midnight! Ivan had brought a cake back from Salym village and we even had birthday candles which were fun to light. After enjoying a slice of cake I sent the boys to bed as it seemed pointless for all of us to stay up waiting for data-especially not Birthday Boy.
The data eventually came, and after sending the boys back a few times, and an interesting conversation with Andrey (he is only 2 weeks older than me, a geologist/geophysicist and has played the piano as long as I played the violin, also in a music school, and also wants to go electric so we were discussing the merits of electric violins/pianos and how he wants to get a mixing set-up) I finally got to bed at 5:30 am!!
After a few hours' sleep, I explained to Simon how to do a full-hole CBL and left for Basecamp after lunch. The main road back has a lot of potholes and I am getting a little bit fed up with that section so I tried singing at the top of my voice to make it less boring...and make sure I stayed awake. Which luckily worked.