Wellington & IYDU

After another long flight, we landed in Brisbane for a stopover on the way to Auckland. Unfortunately everyone had to get off the plane for this and even get our bags scanned (and food/drinks stolen by Aussie customs in some cases) even though we were not entering the country…don’t get me started. I was OK but waiting around in yet another airport wasn’t exactly my favourite experience. Anyway, back onto the plane we hopped for another 3 hours then finally arrived in New Zealand!

As we were a bit delayed I had to speed through Auckland airport from international to domestic - after getting rather a grilling from the immigration who asked to see my return ticket (cold sweat-going back to Libya-I could see his whole attitude shift…) but let me go after a few more awkward questions. What is it with these people that you should end up feeling like you have done something wrong when you really haven’t??!?

One last, hour-long flight to Wellington and that was it! Finally at the end of the Long Way Down and rather glad to be there :-)
The airport in Wellington is situated in a bay outside town and flanked by hills, meaning it is a pretty tricky landing due to wind currents etc. This means international flights cannot land here as big jets would just not make it. But it was nowhere near as hairy as Hong Kong or Madeira!




We are staying in serviced apartments which are very nice and modern, and central. Matthew was already here when I arrived so I just dumped my things and freshened up after which we headed out for dinner on Cuba St, one of the two main nightlife streets in town. It was, admittedly, just a Tuesday night but we found town to be REALLY quiet!

Next morning we got up and decided to try one of Raf’s brunch recommendations out in Lyall Bay. Luckily the bus outside our appartments went right there and it was a really great place…definitely makes it on my top 3 brunch places list around the world! Here are a few photos of Maranui and the view from the terrace…the plane pics above were also taken from there.





After that we just spent the afternoon walking around town a little, doing a spot of shopping then resting legs (especially Matthew’s) before the IYDU kick-off at 6.30pm. We just had time to sneak in a coffee and yuuummmmy muffin at Fidel’s (don’t say it-on Cuba street, with the commies) with Donnie before heading off to parliament for welcome drinks with Nicky and , the leader of the Nationals.
Dinner and drinks followed at the Hummingbird in Courtenay Place (the other hip street), which was quite a nice location and thankfully had outdoor heaters.

Next day was a full conference day, but Donnie, Matthew and I skipped the afternoon session and headed up to the botanical gardens.



The gardens were pretty nice, if a little small. To get up there we took the cable car, which was a fun way of travelling. The gardens were well kept and especially the begonia section and the hydrangea valley were the highlights for me. Generally though, it was just pretty amazing to see so many shades of green!





That evening there was a reception at the Beehive (parliament building) with Prime Minister John Key, and Matthew and I got the chance to have a bit of a chat with him-he seemed pretty down-to-earth and it'll be interesting to see how he fares in the next few years.

Dinner and drinks at the Matterhorn, another place to see on Cuba St...another nice evening, with Chialin and Donnie.

Spent all day in the conference the next day, as there were pretty good speakers on that day, then tried to catch a few rays of sun outside parliament before getting ready for the conference dinner at the Backbencher pub, followed by drinks at the seafront. Incidentally the weather has been sunny but it is pretty cool-max of 22 degrees, which apparently counts as 'hot summer' here :-s

The original shoreline, before a whole load of land got reclaimed



'If this were 1840 I would have very wet feet!' - aka downtown Wellington



Finally Saturday morning saw the committee elections etc, which Matthew skillfully avoided but I attended with my vote...one of the longest meetings I have been to in IYDU! Not much time left to have a bit of a rest then head out to the Botanical Gardens for the final barbecue then onto Red Cube in town for the rest of the evening (and to escape the freezing cold and spots of rain!)

That concluded a well-organised conference and nice stay in Wellington. I am pleased to have seen the town but am glad to be moving on now...after spending 3 days of conference locked inside the parliament rooms (Caucus room-can't complain too much, it was pretty nice to be able to roam around inside parliament without restrictions) I am ready to take off and get some sunshine and fresh air! Except, of course, the beautiful sunny weather seems to have disappeared now...

Logging

...didn't quite go according to plan for reasons that I am too tired to go into so just thought I would leave you with a picture of the rig I took yesterday morning :-)

Rig life so far

So, I have now been here 24 hours and I still get a flutter when I step out of the office container and look up at the rig. Especially at night when it is all lit up and purring away :-)

Well first off, I won't be able to give you as much info as when I was out in Salym, as the work here is rather a lot more confidential. But I will give you as much as I can.

The rig here is a lot bigger than the ones I have been on previously! It also does not have a staircase up the derek (the pointy bit) but a rather exposed ladder, so I am not feeling the photos from the monkey board this time...

It is also rather a lot dirtier, partly due to the drilling mud used (it is oil-based mud which makes the whole thing a lot stickier and messier than water-based) but also to the crew not taking as much care of their work environment.

I get quite a different feel from the team here, definitely not as integrated as what one might expect on a rig, but they seem to be working on it and slowly improving.

Last night we had a meeting about logging with the 2 DSVs, Toolpushers and Wellsite engineers (Day&Night shifts) where I got to explain the plan and quizzed about the pressure testing in the well. On the whole I enjoyed that, as I felt I knew what I was talking about though it felt strange getting used to this new position - ie Town come to the Rig, rather than completely part of the team. However, I am trying to work on that one :-)

I am the only woman on the rig, all the cleaners and cooks here are male too. I was wondering how that would pan out over here but so far it hasn't been much of an issue. Except for the night DSV who thought he could talk over me after asking a question for the geologist, and generally fits the description of a mysoginistic so-and-so. But I managed to deal with that, feeling that everyone else was actually 'on my side'.

That's it for now, enjoyed some Christmas pudding today, shared with Andrew (wellsite geo) and Scott (Scottish mud guy) as well as Doug (canadian toolpusher). By the way there is a huge number of different nationalities on this rig, which I think is pretty unusual-I've got to 17!!

The rig and camp are separate, about 10-15mins' walk or a quick car ride, which apparently is usual for HPHT rigs (keeping most people/living quarters at a distance in case of problems). I am lucky to have got a room at the rig, which means I can roll out of bed in the morning without it being too painful :-) and fall asleep to the purring of the rig. I had almost forgotten the permanent noise of a rig and how comfortable that sound becomes (silence = problem!)

The desert here is so flat and empty it makes the moon seem positively exciting (well, you know, other than being in space and stuff). Next time we need to pick one of the other deserts here for our well location!! But it is a really strange feeling, the rig looks really exposed in the middle of nowhere - haven't even seen any animals or anything, just a couple of flies on the rig. A few pylones are visible on the horizon...I think. Or it could be a mirage. Who knows!

Even the darkness looks different. On the walk over to camp from the rig for dinner last night, I noticed the horizon looked really dark and well...it's a very hard thing to describe, empty darkness...

I am really enjoying taking it all in and transposing my experiences into the Arabic/Libyan version. My ear is still automatically straining to hear Russian but I am trying to learn a few bits of Arabic here, I already know how to say 'crazy old man' ;-)

That's it for now, I am off to take some photos if I can find someone who will lend me a camera...

Here are some photos of our Christmas Dinner last night :

Decorations

The Toolpusher's plastic tree (it had flashing lights :-)

A royal spread...and two amazing huge turkeys!!

At the rig !!! :-)))

Just a quick one to say that after 3weeks of waiting, 1 day of 'definitely not going', and 1 day of ('definitely going'), mad panic re-organising everything including flights home I travelled out to the rig this morning and arrived here on T202 around 11am. The plan is to witness some logging, probably tomorrow evening, and over the next 3 days (Andrew the wellsite geo and I will be alternating). We will be logging with Halliburton.
This evening we were given a slap-up meal for Christmas which was lovely-photos to follow. It made the lousy timing a lot better.
I am pretty tired as have been doing the ops for almost 4 weeks and had a very short night last night due to packing/early flight.

So for now, ***********MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE**************

Helena's house

I ended up having a nice day yesterday for Eid. Came in as usual before 8 to do the ops reporting and morning call and the server was still not working. In fact it had got worse so my computer kept crashing asa I did anything...so I decided to call it quits (nothing much going on with drilling anyway) and go home. Actually I ended up calling Avantika as I knew she was going to the beach in Tajura with her friends, so I raced back, bundled the dog into the car and followed them to the beach.

The weater here has been lovely, about 15 degrees and really warm sun so it was quite enjoyable, though Tajura was stuck under a cloud most of the time.

Tripper had never seen the sea before and it was pretty amusing watching him discover and race the waves!

Headed home around lunchtime and had a snooze in the sun, enjoying in the all-pervasive barbecue smell (yes, sheep sheep and sheep - the last few days have been pretty amusing with sheep turning up in the most random places!)

I spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking my cases and bags properly, re-organising things that need too go to my new house and generally sorting through paperwork. Also got a chance to take a few pics of the house so here they are.

Helena's house:

The view outside the gate:

I want one!

It's a hard life being a naughty dog...

Back-post

I just published an old post about my housing situation here

Dog

Well on Thursday I moved out of Avantika's house, as she had some friends coming to stay, and into Helena's house, who is away for a month and needed a house-sitter.

All this because of course, my landlord still hasn't finished the house, spent all the money (on a new car :-~( and hasn't got back to fixing things again.

However, now that I am on my own in a dog-friendly house I have been able to bring the dog home with me and actually spend some time with him :-))

So, meet Tripper (named after Tripoli of course!):

I have started training him: first to sit, which he is learning quite fast (it's only been a day! but he remembers when he is paying attention to what I say). I also need to house train him (right now I tend to leave him outside during the day but if it rains that might not be ideal-until he has his kennel in my own house that is)

Playing catch-up

There has been so much going on (good and bad) recently that I just haven't had a chance to write anything. Apologies for anyone who doesn't get my 1-line Facebook updates.

I am goingt o post a bunch of things that won't be in order but they should give a good idea of things here.

Can I just re-iterate that I cannot possibly understand how anyone would get bored here...triple-bookings are a regular feature!!

Still alive!

Just had 8 days of internet and phone downtime. Crazy place.

Sabratha

I can't believe this was 4 weeks ago already but there you have it.

So, on Friday 17th October, Mark & Judith organised a trip to Sabratha for a bunch of us. In the end, Alan and Heather joined too with their car so it was a highly organised mini-expedition :-) It was great having Heather there as she could provide some context (Classics phD).

Also present were Azrina, the cross-postee from Malaysia, and Salim (5 of us in M&J's Xtrail) and a couple of geophysicists (Steve and Dinger) in A&H's Xtrail.

Here are the pics, it was a fantastic day out and I must say I got very excited after recognising various parts of the town, and houses etc. So nice to look at Roman history again and so impressive to see what they had managed to achieve more than 2000 years ago. From the photos, you will see that it was a pretty big town, and quite well preserved/restored in parts too (theatre).

Unfortunately I was having exposure problems and my camera needs a good clean-out too so between the two the photos aren't the best but hope they give a decent impression of the place anyway...

For more on Sabratha, you'll just have to come out and visit...

The coliseum


Azrina about to go and meet the lions...

Panem et circenses

Heather in action, with Steve and Salim

The theatre

An old friend...(Paris)

My latin may be abysmal but I am still able to crack a joke:

Come on, it's funny!!

Dinger and Alan trying out the facilities

Hehehe

The trip was rounded off by a highly enjoyable barbecue at Alan & Heather's, sitting back relaxing gazing at the setting sun...life could be a lot worse.

By the way, Alan & Heather are friends with Nick S whom I know from Rijswijk (see old posts) and Mark & Judith I know through Abi2 from Rij as well so it's rather nice completing that circle and getting to know them all a little :-)