Lovely relaxing week in France

Last week I had a lovely week off in France, which I probably should have taken earlier.

After the exhaustion caused by the previous few weeks, it was really nice to just sleep, be in such a peaceful environment, make the most of the lush greenery, pick strawberries and eat them :-)

Didn't really do much else other then weeding and visiting lots of neighbours/eating lots of nice food/laughing at the daft chickens...and trying to tame the new inhabitants of the field :-))

Mad mad mad life

well almost, anyway.
As usual I have a million stories and pics from travels and they are all in a half-finished state in drafts.
So right now I am preparing to leave Holland - just a few more weeks and I can't wait!
In the meantime I have a fun day ahead of me inventorising...the flat, for tenants, and my CDs, books and DVDs, by author, publisher and title no less :-( good thing we didn't decide to take the London books with us ~

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.