Home in Holland

I am home after a week in Tunisia and my eyes are still full of sunshine, palm trees, camels, donkeys and rocks...had to get up at 2am this morning so off to bed pretty soon and will post all about it tomorrow.

Off again...

Well after one day yesterday to sort out laundry and pack yet another bag, I am off in a couple of hours for a week in Tunisia. This time we are going to our work area, which is in Central Tunisia, in the desert so we will be travelling to Duesseldorf this afternoon by train before flying out to Djerba tomorrow and driving on over to the mainland.
I might just have internet access at one of the hotels so will try to post then.
Till then...

Yet another crazy month

After a few days recharging batteries in France, I am off to Spain tomorrow for 4 days on a training course.
!Adios amigos!

Goldman Song

Forever no post, I know, and it's not likely to get any better!

Apart from finding it hard to believe that this time last year I was just starting my 3rd shift in Salym! I just felt like posting some of the lyrics to a song I have been listening to recently and sum up some of my feelings at the moment. If you don't understand get a dictionary or learn French ;-p

Là bas
Tout est neuf et tout est sauvage
Libre continent sans grillage
Ici nos reves sont étroits
C'est pour ca que j'irai là bas

Là bas
Faut du coeur et faut du courage
Mais tout est possible à mon âge
Si tu as la force et la foi
L'or est à portée de tes doigts
C'est pour ca que j'irai là bas

Là bas
J'aurai ma chance le jour et mes droits
Et la fierté qu'ici je n'ai pas

Là bas
Tout ce que tu mérites est à toi
Ici les autres imposent leurs lois

Là bas
Je te perdrai peut-etre là bas
Mais je me perds si je reste là

Happy New Year!

First of all, happy New Year to all :-)
More to come opn that, but for the moment my laptop has had a serious crash so I can't access photos, documents or emails. Hmmm. :-(

Home, finally!

I had planned my flight back yesterday evening with VLM from Rotterdam to City because, for the same price as an Easyjet ticket, things would be so much smoother, easier, more comfortable and simply faster. Plus I was lugging over a suitcase and some fragile Christmas presents...
Arrived nice and early in Rotterdam airport (this time!) and went through to the departure lounge (if that's what you can call what is effectively a waiting room with a shop :-)-all was well.
But...
Just as the previousl flight to LCY was taking off, the announcement was made: blah blah apologies blah blah cancelled blah blah fog! :-(((
To cut a long story short, managed to get onto the delayed KLM flight to Heathrow, getting home 3 hours later than expected and missing Beth's Christmas party :-(

Well, at least I am here now and very much looking forward to a break and NO FLYING for the next 2 weeks :-) Getting the festive feeling...
Still, I have not had a mince pie yet...anybody have any left over?!

In the meantime, have a very MERRY CHRISTMAS and I'll be back before the New Year :-)

Crazy 3 weeks part 3: filming in Holland

After getting back from Tallinn completely knackered, I had a few hours at home in London with Matthew before falling into bed early, and off on the Monday morning red-eye back to Ams.

Monday was rather hectic, with a presentation on Thursday and Technical Meeting in Tunis next week to prepare for...and Tuesday and Wednesday written off!

Tuesday saw me hopping onto a train to Schiphol wih Paul Wood, early again (ouch), to meet a couple of film directors flying over from the UK. Ta-dum! No, not quite that exciting but basically I was going to be filming some features about being a geologist in the oil industry, for the re-opening of a geology museum in Scarborough :-)

Poster girl to the limit...so, there I was panicking about my presentation and my generally awful appearance due to sleep deprivation, sitting on an awful Dutch train (don't do it! - outside of Ams-Rotterdam section, ugh) for 2 1/2 hours all the way up to Groningen. We went through my questions (unscripted...hhhhhh) and finally arrived at the rig (yep, yeehaa, we made it to the real world). Set up, preparations, slight confusion as this rig did not look like the ones I've seen before...then, action! It was freezing cold and pretty tough going for the unscripted straight from scratch, and I felt I might have performed better with a bit more sleep, but we got loads of material and by the end I was getting the hang of it.

The drillers were sniggering a bit though the DSV just seemed to be resigned to the fact that women were taking over the world...I couldn't resist winding him up about his lego beautiful controls :-)

Here's one of "my crew": Paul, the two directors, gaffer and cameraman

Wednesday was day 2 of filming, this time in Rijswijk in the visualisation room and the core lab.

I caked on a ton of make-up (the train back had taken its time, and I was working on my presentation, so got home quite late and couldn't get an early night...) and went for it. This time, most of the work was scripted, reading off an autocue. I really enjoyed that part, especially after an hour or so of warming up, and they did a lot of re-takes of other things in the core lab as I was feeling a lot more relaxed and "natural" in front of the camera.

I learnt a lot from this experience, and really it isn't as easy as it seems! Unscripted is really tough as you need to think of an easy straightforward way of saying things that you cannot come back and elaborate on. When you start off in front of the camera, people just say "be natural"...however, that isn't quite right as you really need to be aware of, and control, your movements. Staring at the camera with a fixed smile for a little while after you have finished speaking isn't what I would call natural! But if you don't quick movement looks really odd and it is very hard for the guys to edit the footage.

Anyway, it was great fun despite the circumstances and I look forward to seeing the result!

Crazy 3 weeks part 2: Tallinn

After coming back from Bosnia I spent a bit of a mad 48h, which consisted of: manic work-salsa-pack-sleep-shower-manic work-russian lesson-more work-airport-London-repack-sleepabit-taxi-Stansted-easyjet again-Tallin!

I have come to Tallinn to take part in the IYDU Council Meeting, which has proved to be interesting so far in many ways.

Arrived around lunchtime yesterday after taking the red-eye over from London-about 1/10th of the price of flying from Amsterdam!
It was pretty nice weather here yesterday afternoon, clear skies and not too cold (just above zero) so after lunch, I headed into the Old Town with Donnie to have a bit of a look around and do a bit of shopping. I really regretted not taking the camera as some of the houses here are pretty colourful and the afternoon light was lovely.

Had a mooch around for about an hour then headed back to the hotel to check in, unpack, have a nap and a shower before kicking off the conference. The first event yesterday evening was a meeting with the (Mrs) Speaker of Parliament, who turned out to be a rather interesting character: phD in astrophysics from Moscow University about 30 years ago, very outspoken in her opinions against dictatorship/pro democracy (celebrating Chavez defeat-hear hear!) and ordering us to get drinks! The snacks were a bit sparse so some of us headed out for dinner at teh Beer House, which serves a range of Estonian beers (including honey beer-yum) a nice local fayre. After which we headed out to a club-bit of a late night.

Today, sessions started at 10am with a presentation about the e-stonia and how and why the country is so advanced in the computer age (wi-fi everywhere, all business incl cabinet meetings conducted using the internet) - interesting and very positive in a way, although the Big Brother aspects of this made me rather uncomfortable. And the vulnerability of relying entirely on the internet for business was recently showed up by Estonia's beloved neighbours: Rossiya...

Must go now, reception to celebrate Finnish independence being held at a former political prison-more tomorrow.

Another week in the Hague...

Last week seemed to fly past quite quickly, getting stuck in to some Tunisia work then spending most afternoons following the well in Pakistan...several of us became completely addicted to Insite Anywhere, the tool that allows you to see how drilling is going, which was a bit of a problem because they were drilling so slowly, and of course, things keep going wrong!

Monday night salsa (halfway through the course now, and enjoying it!), Tuesday night Russian lesson (yes, I started again :-) then dinner with Radik, Florian and a few others, Wednesday was a quiet evening and Thursday went round to Allison's to get briefed on Gracie's stay with us this week...ended up taking the dog home! So Gracie came to stay on Thursday night and will be with us till next Sunday.




















Friday was a bit of a mad day - or supposed to be, at any rate. I found out on Thursday evening that I had to do the ops on the Pakistan well as Hermann was going to be in London for a business meeting! Just as we were about to go into reservoir...so I was a little scared but pretty excited and decided to come in early on Friday to play around with Hermann's workstation-nothing scarier than having to make decisions with tools you don't know well.

So, Friday morning early, logged into Insite Anywhere...to find that they had pulled out of hole! (to change the drill bit-this was because they wanted to put a steerable assembly on, as they had been deviating instead of drilling straight down. Never mind the fact that we had asked to keep going...) Pretty disappointing, as I didn't have much left to do on that.


However, this meant that I could go in the afternoon to help with a Business Continuity exercise-basically testing out emergency response systems in case something happened to our office in Rijswijk. The idea is that business critical people are moved to another main office and here we were testing out the set-up in the Hague. It was a pretty interesting experience, and meant I could also walk straight home at the end of it.

















Matthew arrived on Saturday morning so we went to wait for him at the station. Had a nice relaxing weekend and even managed a nice long walk in the woods yesterday as it was sunny (but freezing!). The dog fell asleep in the afternoon and hardly woke up till this morning! (we weren't far off either-although I still managed to bake a pineapple cake and make a risotto for dinner :-)

My London

It was really nice working from London for a couple of days. The weather was typically autumnal and I couldn't resist going out and taking a load of pictures in St James' park on Friday...Saturday was pretty rubbish weather but that didn't matter because Matthew and I started off by speaking at a debate about taxation at the French intstitute (Institut Francais); the organiser then treated us to lunch at a local Lebanese restaurant...tasty food :-) I do like South Ken.

We had a leisurely afternoon before having a few people round for dinner; it wasnice catching up with Rachel, getting to know Mark a little as well as our neighbour downstairs, Karl, who turned out to be quite an interesting character!

Headed back to Rotterdam Sunday night, this time with loads of time to spare before the flight...

England

I am in London at the moment as I had a career's fair to go to this week.

Tuesday afternoon just after 5, I got picked up by my taxi from work to go to Rotterdam airport. I was very much looking forward to this trip and for once was fully prepared, hadn't forgotten anything at home and was actually ready a bit early.
As we left the office we headed into rush hour, and after being stuck for a little while the driver took a back road and we were free to drive again...for all of one minute! until we reached the motorway slip road. Completely jam-packed.

To cut a long story short, the journey took just over an hour instead of 15 minutes, so even my contingency plans had been thwarted. I somehow managed to keep calm and just rehearsed moves through the airport/how I would get myself to Ams in time for the last flight.

I arrived at the airport 9 min before the flight departure. I had been considering phoning our travel agent to change the flights but decided to do it at the airport. I ran in like a complete maniac and asked if it was still possible to get on the flight, hand luggage only...quick radio call...yes! I left her with my passport and booking number and rushed out to the waiting taxi to pay him. And this is where it almost all came undone.

The driver had to get the credit card machine from the boot and then spent what seemed like ages fumbling with the slip of paper. During this time, the check-in lady came out to see what on earth I was doing...I managed to communicate to the driver that the plane was waiting for me! Finally made it back in and through security, by this time rather incoherent. The guards were clearly bored so I got told off for having a bottle of water, for which I apologised profusely ( a little manically) and he let me off...I had a feeling that if I had been impatient with him he would have held me up so I would miss the flight.

Dash over to passport control (all of 5m) during which time my name was being called over the speakers, then through to the gate (another 7 m ) were people seemed relaxed and smiled at me...probably the laugh of the day.. Still not able to speak any language properly at this stage but the next thing I knew I was running across the tarmac to the waiting plane! The stairs man was making his way towards the stair latch and also seemed to be relaxed and smiling (laughing??).

And there I was, on the plane, 4 minutes before departure!!

Skin and teeth comes to mind. Never before, never again!

The other people on board did not look at me too grumpily so I assumed they hadn't been waiting for too long, but it took a little while for me to calm down and enjoy a drink and snack. All was well by the time we landed in London, but I needed all the adrenaline I had used up to get to my next appointment...

But before I move on...people, fly VLM! What a great airline :-)

Right, so in London, hopped onto the DLR and then the tube and got to Victoria in time to rush into the car rental shop at 19:28 (ie 2 minutes before closing time). Picked up the rental car and drove home feeling quite happy about the prospect of sitting quietly on the sofa for a while!
Which is exactly what we did.

Next morning, up at 5.45am to leave in time to a) avoid the C charge and b) avoid traffic. I was heading up to Keyworth, near Nottingham, to man a stall at the British Geological Society careers' fair. My fellow stall-person, Willem, had flown down from Aberdeen and stayed near the airport overnight. I much preferred the London option, and in view of the price and hassle attached to a train ride, as well as the rubbish timing (same length of time to drive than to go by train) I chose to drive.

This is of course where I remembered that it is only the 3rd time I drive on this side of the road, and only the second time with a LHD car...
Left a little later than expected but still avoided the C charge. London traffic was already heavier than I had hoped and I almost had a crash when some idiot cut right in front of me at Marble Arch...not the best roundabout in history :-(

However, made it onto Edgware Road, then onto the M1 in quite good time...took just over 30mins to get there. After a while, the sun rose behind me, just as I was driving through a wooded area with amazing autumnal colours...a very enjoyable section of the journey.

I was very lucky with my trip up: although some areas were quite busy, there were no jams all the way to junction 23, which is where I left the motorway. I then drove through Loughborough and on through the countryside up to Keyworth. Found the BGS almost first go and arrived just in time to unpack everything before the start of the fair. Quite a varied drive really: London, motorway, small town, dual carriageway, village and country lane driving! Can't say I was too impressed with Loughborough but the villages nearby were quite pretty.

The fair went well, our stall was extremely busy, to the point where I hardly managed to drink one cup of tea during the whole morning because I was talking non-stop. Lunch was provided for exhibitors and Willem and I took turns to tuck in before heading back for a marginally quieter afternoon.
Willem left at 3 to catch a plane, leaving me to pack up. Which was all fine until I realised all the boxes needed taping up and I had no tape, and I had to write an address on all the boxes for the courier. Not sure we'll be seeing those again soon...

Before leaving, I couldn't resist going into the geology shop and ended up buying a couple of maps :-) then jumped into the car to head home before rush hour. On the way out of Keyworth I took a wrong turn and drove along what ended up to be a shortcut through the fields...a proper country lane, only wide enough for one car, bordered with hedges and winding through a few isolated farms in the setting sun...what a lovely start to the journey back :-) Which again was fine, until I got into London and realised I was coming in the wrong way and ended up lost in North London. Luckily, I had brought the Nuvi navigation system we bought for Tunisia, just in case, and it helped me get home safely from somewhere near Farringdon/Finsbury Park/???. North London isn't exactly the kind of place you can just turn down a side-street and hope for the best. It all worked out in the end though, despite a wrong turn after which the Nuvi just went berserk and lost it bearings for a crucial 5 minutes...there are far too many one-way roads in London!!!

I got home and realised I was completely exhausted...6 hours of driving in one day isn't necessarily that bad, but topped with standing at a stall for 5 hours and the extra concentration required in an unfamiliar car and road set-up, it was quite heavy-going. By the way, the car was a Skoda Bravia, which I didn't particularly enjoy driving; it was OK, despite the fact that 2nd and 4th gear are far too close together, but did not feel as nifty as a little Nissan or Citroen. I could live quite happily without driving another one of those.

That's it for now, working from London today and tomorrow and looking forward to the weekend...

Hens etc

On Saturday it was Abi's hen night which was great fun.
Here are a few pics...a great opportunity to start playing with the camera!

It was lovely to catch up with Jo, Beth and Ebba :-) felt a lot like "the good old days"...

Nikon D-40x

I HAVE MY NEW CAMERA :-))))))))))))))

So much for tidying my flat tonight...click-click, here I come!

Crazy travelling week part 2: Tunis

Tunis: Wednesday 10th to Friday 12th

with most photos shamelessly stolen from Hermann, who had a nice camera when I didn't.

Actually wrote this post while I was out there.

Here I am in Tunis, sitting on my hotel balcony looking out onto the pool through an arch of pink, orange and white bougainvillees which at this time of day is teeming with birds chattering away (reminiscent of the Golden Tulip in Nizwa in fact)…maybe it comes with the Golden Tulip package ;-) Anyway, waking up slowly this morning to the sound of several hundred birds was pretty amazing and a great start to the day.

Bougainvillees in Sidi Bou Said:

We arrived yesterday (Wednesday) around 3:30 and got to the hotel around 4:30 after a bit of a long wait for our luggage (Hermann went from muttering about priority luggage to crossed fingers and a few shades paler until his luggage finally came through on the last batch). The weather was lovely, 24 degrees and sunny (PLUS 24 this time!!!) and the hotel is in a pretty nice location-perched up on the hill on the way to Carthage, overlooking the bay and the mountains…a perfect holiday or conference hotel, not so perfect for doing business in town as it is a bit of a drive (but nothing compared to a British commute!)

>

Our driver, Lotfi, has been very helpful and agreed to take us to Sidi Bou Said after we had checked in, so we spent an hour admiring the houses and enjoying the atmosphere with surprisingly little hassle from the salesmen on the way up, and ended up at the café overlooking the bay where I had a Turkish coffee sitting on rugs.

We got back before seven to allow Lotfi to get home in time for food (it’s still Ramadan) and agreed to meet a bit later for dinner in the hotel restaurant…while I waited I sat out at the terrace, enjoying a burrha (Sp?) with orange, watching the sun go down :-).

Had a good chat with Hermann over dinner (we really need to have a team dinner…hardly know anything about anyone on this team! Or a teambuilding exercise in Tunisia…)

This morning we headed into town to meet ETAP, the Tunisian Petroleum Agency, to get to know the data people there and have a bit of a chat about our area. We ended up with the friendly Dr Amri going to look for a whole bunch more things and not giving up till he personally found them. A very productive and positive time there.

After ETAP we asked Lotfi to take us into town to the main hotel, where we had a nice lunch (most restaurants are closed at the moment for lunch) before heading off to meet our Country Chairman for Tunisia (downstream office). That was also pretty interesting and got even better as he revealed that he had set up an office for us to use when we are in town!! No need to mention that one twice…I think Hermann and I have already decided which desks we’ll take ;-)

After that we noticed that most people were heading home, even though it was quite early; the whole place feels a bit like Christmas Eve which is interesting and unexpected. It is still unclear whether Eid is going to be tomorrow or the day after but everyone seems to be assuming the former anyway.

Our country chair suggested that we head out to Medina and the old city where there is apparently a lot going on in this season…street shows etc, till late into the night and during Ramadan only. So we are thinking of heading out pretty soon in that direction.

Although very short, this trip has actually been really productive. It feels pretty surreal being here in the mild weather and so clearly in a completely different environment, yet only a short flight away from home. The swimming pool was a bit chilly when I went in about an hour ago but still perfectly swimmable, and the evening sun still warm enough to make a difference…

It has been fascinating for me to finally come to Tunisia; although I have only had a snapshot view of it so far, it seems to me that at least in Tunis, people here are A LOT more relaxed than in most of the Middle East and North Africa; women drive around, bare-headed, wearing trousers etc etc and look in fact just like our North African immigrants back home, just on a sunny backdrop. I noticed several different types of ethnicities although I haven’t managed to identify them all of course. And the big thing here is being able to speak French…it opens so many doors (see Dr Amri) and just generally allows you to communicate where English is just non-existent. And our driver just gave me a box of makroud as a present simply because I had asked for a recommendation of a good place to buy it (and pestering him with questions about Tunis). I am tempted to skip dinner…

I could definitely see myself living here…yet another reminder of why I took this job in the first place. NOT to sit in a big corporate office in a grey rainy country. Yeah.

Crazy travelling week part 1: Paris

On Sunday 7th I got approval from Hermann to book and organise our trip to Tunis...from 10th to 12th! Last-minute excitement turned into panic as I realised I had just buried my summer wardrobe somewhere...oh how terrible these luxury problems can be.

To go to Tunis from Ams we need to fly via Paris, so I decided to take Tuesday afternoon off and visit Marc, who happened to be in Paris for a couple of weeks.

A quick phone call and I had a dinner party in Paris, 2 days in sunny Tunisia and a weekend in Belgium (Capitalist Ball on Friday night in Brussels) :-)) the nightmare pack of the year, especially as I had decided to travel light (as of now, etc etc).

So Tuesday afternoon saw me happily following my well-trodden route to Schiphol for my first ever flight on Air France, in Classe d'Affaires no less (lovely snacks with the coffee but no much leg room). A quick hop later and I was in Roissy CDG, picking up my luggage and the train ticket for Paris-Brussels on Friday before hopping onto the RER.

A little while later I emerged into the 15th arrondissement, to be greeted by Marc and taken to his flat via a nice bakery (whine whine I miss that kind of choice at that kind of price). Alena was in full swing preparing for the dinner party they had kindly organised so I split my time between trying to keep out of the way and trying to help with preparations :-)

Marc's flat was in a very typical Parisian internal courtyard

It all came together nicely in time for the first guests and we could all relax and enjoy the champagne as the evening progressed. It was really lovely meeting some of Marc's friends from uni/flatmates, from school and from his previous job. It was the first time I have been to a French dinner party, and luckily was pretty relaxed-my French finally de-rusted itself halfway through so all was well there. It was fascinating getting an insight into a very different type of French person then those I have met before (well, Parisians, you know...;-)

I am really glad I stopped off in Paris (even though it meant kicking Marc&Alena out of their own home) as it was lovely to catch up with them, meet new and interesting people, see a new part of Paris (briefly), eat some nice food and get my French ready for business in Tunisia.

End-of-the-night munchies...of course, we didn't think of actually taking any pics DURING the evening...

So after a short night (4 hours :-( I gathered up my belongings, took out the next set of tickets and headed back to Roissy, where I arrived in good time-luckily considering the lack of signs at the train station resulting in my ending up in completely the wrong terminal :-(

Finally settled down in the AirFrance lounge with a drink and a madeleine and enjoyed reading the Figaro whilst waiting for Hermann.

Eventually we got on the flight to Tunis and settled in for the next 2 1/2 hours with a nice glass of champagne. Lunch was mostly nice, although the bread and starter left me wondering if they contracted out their catering to Sodexho...

Arriving in Tunisia we had a wonderful view out of the windows as the plane flew SouthWest along the coast for a good 10 minutes...the Tunisian Atlas looked pretty dramatic and all the details of the Tunis area were visible. What a fantastic start to that leg of the trip.

Weekend

Well at 4.30pm on Friday it started raining so I did have to take the tram home (typical-for once I actully rode the bike in!). In the end I got to 4942 steps on Friday...feeling rather sedentary!

Had a nice evening catching up with Joanne . She came with me to look after Yu-Lan's two siamese cats-I am feeding for the the week as Yu is away, and spend a bit of time with them every evening to keep them company. I really am not a cat person, but these two are not too bad.

Saturday we met up with Sasha and Max and went to Utrecht. I had been considering Antwerpen but decided against it as it is rather a long trek just for 1 day.
The weather was beautiful and we really enjoyed walking around Utrecht; this time we went and booked tickets for the tower straight away so got some for the 5 o'clock tour. After which we hired a pedal boat and the boys kindly pedaled away for an hour while Joanne and I relaxed in the back :-)
I took a few photos but I need to get Max and Sasha's, after which I will post some here. Max especially takes nice portraits.

Saturday evening we went out in Scheveningen, now joined by Rene-Charles, who was due to leave for Karachi on Sunday. In fact, he is now in Dubai, awaiting orders as things aren't ready or safe in Pakistan. No, not jealous at all. Hrmph.

Sunday we got up quite late :-) then whizzed round Amsterdam before picking Sergey up from the airport and going for dinner in Rijswijk.
The weather was still amazing so it really feels like we made the most of it. All-in-all a fun weekend!

More later, must work.

Pedometer

I had a sandwich at my desk yesterday so I could use my lunch break to blog but it took a lot longer than expected and I haven't quite finished posting about the last 3 weeks, so come back soon.
In the meantime, I did a bit of tidying at home yesterday evening as Joanne is coming to stay with me this evening for a few days, and I found the free pedometer I had received on the Monotower visit.

I decided to put it on this morning as an experiment and I have so far (it's 3 pm) done 2747 steps, which seems ridiculously little in view of the fact that you are supposed to do 10 000 just to STAY fit, and 15 000 to start loosing weight...I did cycle in today but walking to and from the tram is not going to bring the score up by much...oh dear.

3 good weeks

I have been pretty busy the last few weeks-not much chance to use my computer outside of work, plus the usual struggle to upload pictures.

Clearly we need a camera each-M has just gone to Romania for the weekend without one, as I have it here in Holland. I need to do a bit of research as I rather fancy a digital SLR...we'll see. Anyway, I don't like the one we have now.

So I last posted about the tax accountant visit and just to clarify, tax brackets are rather different over here! I pay 52% + social security contributions but would be paying about half that in the UK for the same salary...arghgrmblgrahbg.

After my last post, I did a bit of work and then set off on the Thalys for Paris and on to the "farm". I managed to do some work on the train as I was travelling first class (cheaper than second :-) but kept getting distracted by the fact that my computer was trying to talk to another computer in the carriage-clearly not the only employee on board!

Almost managed to catch a train immediately in Paris-Austerlitz but the card system decided not to read Dutch Mastercard so I didn't make it and had to wait a little while. Overall the journey was fine but a little long-and the Belgian railways seem to make me queasy every time I travel on them :-(

Matthew was already there so it was nice to find him waiting in Tours.

I stayed there until Sunday and although the weather was awful and rainy on the Thursday it was fantastic by Saturday and it was lovely to finally get the feel of summer and visit a few neighbours. We also had a good mooch around the Loches market on Saturday morning-funny to see a provincial town in action, with the mayor walking around greeting people, set on a backdrop of medieval buildings to the tune of...an Indian drum, dancers and fire-eater!!

Back at home we managed to pull down about 10 dead trees and chopped them all up ready for next winter...things go so much faster with 3 people at work :-)

It was good to get some physical exercise and make the most of the clean air.

As for the animals, everyone is well, Mrs Duck sitting on her 26 eggs!! (they are pretty well arranged and covered so quite hard to make out in the photo of the nest below) and Mr Duck fending us off (they don't really like cameras). The lambs are growing and love pears (unripe-who cares) and the chicken have been producing an egg a day each for a while now...I took a few back and had a lovely fresh free-range poached egg every morning for a week! Lettuces were growing really well and must have been loving the wet summer...I took some of those back too and they were really tender and tasty :-)

On Monday (27th August) afternoon I started a 4-day course in 123DI, which is an interpretation and visualisation software for seismic and other data. It was a very useflu course and the class was pretty small (8 people) and hands-on (exercises) so I learnt a lot. Ulli was on the course too so we could and still can compare notes.

While I was in the learning centre I ran into Alex Patalkha and his colleague Misha (also Well Services). I had only seen Misha briefly out there but knew Alex a little from my last shift in BC so it was fun to see them again. Had a couple of Russian lunches with them, but not before a French lunch with Rene-Charles, who is on his way out to Pakistan to do his final wellsite shift on our new well there (he did his first two in Egypt, not Salym). However, in view of the security situation and logistical issues, his trip had been delayed for a week so he was stuck in a hotel in Den Haag (rented out his flat for 6 months during his cross-posting). To cut a long story short he came and stayed in my spare room for a week or so, until he found out his new departure date. It was fun having a flatmate again for a while!

On Tuesday nigth, after he dropped his stuff off, we went out in Delft, first enjoying the (cold but clear) early evening at Roy's house then moving on to a nice restaurant and a pub). It was really nice to catch up with Roy, Dina and Mark N (though it is still strange to see him in this context-I keep getting flashbacks to 2nd year RSM fieldtrips!!). Wednesday night I had a few quiet drinks with Alex and Misha and Thursday I headed back to London for a long weekend (I had taken Friday off).

And why exactly does Roy have so many hats in his house???










Unfortunately I started getting a sore throat on Thursday night and had to stay in bed half of Friday, which was a miserable thing to have to do on a day off. On Friday afternoon we had a small TPA workshop followed by dinner at the Roof Gardens...perfect way of enjoying a lovely evening looking out towards Imperial :-)

Saturday we set off for Brighton and arrived there in time for a lunch of Fish and Chips on the beach while we waited for our hotel room to be prepared. We soon discovered why finding a room had been such a nightmare:

which led us to stay at the Grand...not such a chore really :-)

Here's one of Matthew looking very Victorian on the beach there (well, without a deckchair)

Had a really nice bath at the hotel before setting off for Sarah and Simon's wedding up the hill at the Old Market in Hove...here are a couple of pics I have shamelessly stolen from Martin!

Yes, we cleverly left the camera at the hotel so have no photographic record of the event but it was a great party!! with a few deja vu moments such as the "geologists" photo: same group, same photographer, different bride ;-)

Next day we tucked in to a huge tasty breakfast before checking out and moving down to the swimming pool and sauna. An hour later, we met up with Becca and Olly for an inevitable milkshake and spent a good hour enjoying the lovely weather on the complimentary dekchairs at the end of Brighton Pier :-))

Got home in time for a leisurely dinner and an early night before the next morning's red-eye...

Last week it was back to work and most people were back including The Boss so things were quite busy, running through what we had done so far and building on them. I'll write a separate post on work though.

Unfortunately the sore throat had now morphed into a nasty cough so that wasn't much fun but it didn't prevent me from jumping on a train to Amsterdam and meeting Richard (who was over for the day) for a nice Chinese meal.

Tuesday night was an early one, due previous day's red-eye and the cough but unfortunately this didn't make it go away and people were started giving me funny looks in the office on Wednesday...

Wednesday night I had a very enjoyable dinner with Sasha A and Max who are over on a four-week course :-) although Max did manage to leave his jacket (and mobile) at the restaurant.

I was planning on working from home on Friday but Hermann-the-German invited some people in to talk to us about some work they could do for us. So I rescheduled to Friday at 2pm and managed to join them for lunch at the Wok place over the road. On Wednesday we had eaten at the same place but in the Thai section...it has been nice to get away from the canteen for a while!

I flew from Rotterdam as I was going to be attending the GeolSoc Bicentennary Conference in London for work from Sunday-Wednesday so I had the luxury of going there by taxi, which was fantastic-it only takes 15 minutes from the office to the airport! I really enjoyed flying VLM and arrived at the TPA office at 3pm after cruising through City airport. Which meant I got a chance to do a bit of work still, go to the doctor's AND get some (grocery) shopping in.

Unfortunately I have bronchitis, which is a viral infection and therefore cannot be cured with antibiotics :-( the cough goes on...

Saturday we went shopping on Victoria Street and I FINALLY got a new phone (free upgrade well overdue-I got the Nokia 6300) so I am still playing with my new toy. It has a really good battery life, is very light and has a voice memo recording capability. It also has a camera, although it wasn't something I was particularly looking for, and an FM radio.

John came round later on and took us out for dinner to celebrate his first paycheck, which was lovely. We sat on the terrace at Sole Mio and enjoyed the clear evening (with a little help from the patio heater).

Sunday we decided to do a bit more DIY so I fixed all the new door handles on and Matthew painted the back of the bedroom door and skirting. Which now only leaves the bedroom cupboard doors :-)

A bit later we met up with Donnie who was in town for work- hadn't seen him for a while so it was really good to catch up, and Chris popped by too. After which I headed off the QE II conference centre for the GeolSoc icebreaker, where I plunged straight in to manning the stall with Paul (who invited me along) and Keri (conference organiser).

The next 3 days were basically spent at the GeolSoc conference, manning the stall on Monday and Tuesday and doing career talks on Wednesday. It was rather nice living at home for a change, whilst working! And the views from the conference centre are rather nice:

In fact, the weather was beautiful the whole time, which made it very pleasant to go out and catch up with Scott in Bloomsbury and later Kwasi, too, on the Monday night. On Tuesday I made the mistake of going to the conference dinner...rather unimpressive food and the feeling of intruding into a cliquey group of academics with American wives with food issues...one learns...

Overall though, the conference was great for me on another level too-I went in to some random talks during times of no stall activity, just to hear about some different kinds of geology (and see if I could still follow...I could...sometimes...just...I mean I hadn't even thought about the word "mafic" for about 5 years, come ooon...).

The careers' day was another new experience...having packs of teenagers let loose on us was challenging to the extreme! It reminded me of a swarm of crickets...one second there was order, the next our stall had been picked clean of freebies and Paul and I were left gasping for air and half-deafened. I shamelessly redirected a large number of kids over to Paul who was doing a demo, while I hooked on to the teachers who had so gleefully handed over the responsibily of their classes to us...

I was also doing a talk, along with Iain Stewart from the University of Plymouth (of BBC fame-watch: Earth: The Power of a Planet on BB2 on 19th November!), a lady from Rio Tinto and a girl from BP. Turns out BP and Rio didn't get a copy of the brief and aimed their presentations at university student level, rather than GCSE/A Level...I felt rather sorry for them. As for mine, apart from mild panic at the thought that youngsters nowadays might not get a reference to Friends, all went well and they actually laughed a few times in the right places. Iain did a great talk about the carbon cycle which I wish the whole world had attended, to help them understand a bit more of the fundamentals of science before they get caught up in political and ideological debates based on corrupt facts.

It was quite a successful conference, and I found it refreshing to meet such a different range of people, from Sir Mark Moody-Stuart (whom I talked to for a good 10 minutes without having a clue who it was...doh!) to bright-eyed school kids looking for a calling, through my fellow student Elizabeth B's boss in Canada and a Japanese specialist on gravity and magnetics!

Wednesday afternoon, Paul and I headed back to City airport for a really easy flight home-the number of flights out of that airport around 5pm, and the efficiency with which passengers are processed was absolutely amazing. TAKE NOTE BAA! Yet another proof that state-run monopolies just don't work.

Bye Bye home, till next time...