Tuesday 21 December 2010

Indonesian Utilities

One of the downsides of living here is that electricity and water supplies are intermittent. To combat the lack of power we have a small generator that is connected to the electrical cabling inside the house. And we have a 2500 litre water tank on the flat roof for when we have no water.

Normally the power supply is fine - and maybe drops out for 10 minutes every couple of days, so no great hardship. And up until a few days ago we've had no water issues, but yesterday that changed when, at 5am, the water went off. It's been 28 hours and we are at 50% capacity in the reserve water tank.

As a result of this we are washing Indonesian-style: scooping up buckets of cold water and hurridly rinsing off the shampoo and soap. Even in this hot climate it's a shocking experience.

Good job we're off to a 5-star hotel in Lombok. Yeah baby!

Monday 20 December 2010

Three Days In Civilisation

It wasn't so long ago that popping to Australia for three days on business was an alien concept to me. For starters the idea of a business trip was well outside my realm of experience, and then there was the distance from Britain to Australia to consider.

Living in Indonesia does have its pitfalls but its proximity to Australia certainly does make things easier. These little jaunts to Oz also serve to highlight how strange Indonesia is to the newly arrived expat.

The first thing I noticed when I woke up in Darwin was that it was quiet (no traffic noise or calls to prayer) and orderly (the cars on the roads were well behaved and there were no swarms of motorbikes to be seen). When I went to cross the road at a pedestrian crossing a car stopped next to me. I waited a few seconds and wondered why the car didn't carry on, and then I realised it had stopped so I could cross the road. That never happens in Balikpapan!

And while I was in Perth, which is as cosmopolitan a city as Singapore (just on a smaller scale), I was reminded that fast food is meant to be served fast, a process that is forgotten in Indonesia where a wait of 10 minutes for your order is all part and parcel of the experience.

Those three days in civilisation were enough to wipe out the stress and anxiety of living in Balikpapan for the previous month. And (hopefully) I'll get back to Perth on a monthly basis for the first quarter of 2011 to recharge my sense of normalcy.

Monday 13 December 2010

Rig UpDATE

Like what I did with the title? So, events have transpired (as they have a tendency to do) and I won't be joining the Sapeim 10,000 after all. Instead I will be jetting down to Perth for a day, possibly two, and then back to Indonesia.

Rig Up Report

I can't go into many details here, so I will give you an abridged version to bring you all up to date: the Geolog crew arrived in Jakarta on December 2nd, and then travelled to Balikpapan the day after. I met them at the airport, took them to lunch and packed them off to the staff house where they settled in by going on a drinking session at the Blue Sky Hotel. The day after (Saturday, December 4th) we took a 2-hour ferry boat out to the Saipem 10,000, which was anchored a kilometre off the coast (immediately opposite the Geolog office).


By the time we had boarded and undergone the safety induction the day was spent. I split the crew into two groups and took each out to recon the drillship so they could get the lay of the land (or would "lay of the deck" be more suitable? The next day, and all the days after that we worked +12 hour days to get as much done as possible because on Wednesday (December 8th) we were getting booted off the rig because of visa issues which prevented us from staying on baord during the sail to East Timor, so the job was cut short by 5 days.

It was back to Balikpapan where I had to contend with an unruly rig-up crew who were fed up with the staff house and Balikpapan in general, and do my day job as an operations manager. I'll be blunt - my spritis were low at the point and I came very close to throwing in the towel and giving up on Geolog all-together. My senior manager back in Amsterdam gave me a pep talk and I stepped away from the ledge. Luckily the hotel I moved them to and three crates of beer I provided them (coupled with a relaxing day at the pool/excursions to the local "zoo"/shopping trips to traditional markets) put the riot to rest.


The second phase of the rig-up is scheduled to resume in Darwin, where I am at this moment (see pics above) after a couple of hours looking around Kuta in Bali, while the drillship is in harbour loading up supplies and equipment for the East Timor well. We are due to go onboard tomorrow, by boat again, and continue where we left off. We have approximately 4 or 5 days to complete the job. My next blog post will likely announce the outcome.

Wednesday 1 December 2010

Shipping Box Status: ARRIVED

I don't think that I have even mentioned the saga of our shipping boxes once on this thread. Mrs Mudblogger (aka Rachel) has been posting all about it on her own blog every so often. If you haven't been reading them (and why should you, after all this blog is enough to make everyone happy) The boxes were collected from our house in the UK in August and put on the boat at the start of September. They were only meant to take 8 to 10 weeks from departure to arrival, plus a couple of weeks for Customs clearance here in Indonesia. After 6 weeks we had an email telling us that in the next 2 weeks we would get notification when our boxes would arrive. Well, nothing came so after another fortnight Mrs Mudblogger started hassling them for info. They couldn't tell us anything, except that our boxes were in Hong Kong. Look at a map - HK is way out of the way. We started to get worried so I enlisted the help of a local international shipping agent and he started making calls. He didn't get much further either, so we all settled in for some bad news.

But low and behold after months and months of silence they turned up, a little battered, today at work. The office driver and strongman is taking them over to the house at this very minute. Christmas has come early for Mudblogger Jnr!

Sunday 28 November 2010

She's Here!

The Saipem 10,000 drill ship is finally in Balikpapan. Anchored at Buoy #1 near the outer marker of Balikpapan's port authority's zone of control (and conveniently right outside the Geolog office) she arrived at 10am this morning.

I've taken a photo from the upstairs balcony at the office - the Saipem 10k is the bundle of grainy pixels in the centre. Don't let the photo fool you - it is a B-I-G vessel and she is much, much closer than she appears. Plus the weather is sunny and the skies are blue. Crappy iPhone camera.

Now it just remains to get the unit on board, the start-up crew out here and the rig-up underway. Hopefully by the end of the week we'll all be onboard and sweating kilos off our waistlines.

Monday 22 November 2010

It's Raining, It's Pouring

When it rains in Balikpapan it really rains. It is hard to describe and photos don't do it justice so here are two videos of the same rain "shower".


The first one (approximately 2 minutes long) is about 5 minutes into the shower. Note that the 4-lane road is already flooded to 4 or 5 inches right the way across. The second, shorter, video was filmed a minute or two after the first one and is of a low point that filled up during the course of the brief storm, which ended about 5 minutes later. The volume of water is absolutely staggering - at best guess I'd say that around 4 inches/10 cm of rain fell in 15 minutes. Luckily it drains away just as quickly.

Sunday 14 November 2010

Angkot What?

Due to a series of mis-communications (as in the Geolog driver filled my car's petrol tank up and then left the key in a locked building while everyone went for lunch) I was stranded at the office today.

Weighing up my options I opted to jump on an angkot. "A what?" you say. In Indonesian angkot means 'lift' and these scrappy little Toyota minibuses run up and down the main roads providing a shuttle bus service for anyone brave enough to get on. There are no stops or fares; you simply flag one down, jump on and stick some battered rupiah notes in the driver's hand when you disembark.


So there I was, standing at the kerbside looking like an albino lemon for 2 or 3 minutes, all-the-while observing to myself that whenever I'm driving on the same road, or walking to the shops, there are a hundred angkots buzzing around like flies. So I hit upon a remedy that always works in Britain - light up a cigarette. Within two drags one pulled up next to me and off I went.

We zipped along the main strip, working up and down the gears, into town with the breeze doing the job of an air conditioner and 15 minutes later I was at the central junction and ready to get off. Not knowing how to stop the roller coaster I tapped the guy in front on the shoulder and he obligingly shouted "stop" to the driver. Yes, 'stop' in Indonesian is stop. Go figure.

I jumped out, deposited 3000 rupiah in the driver's hand (the price for a local is 2000 but expats get a premium service!), crossed the street and grabbed my second angkot which was heading up the road we live off. Unlike the first leg of my journey this driver only used second gear so the lack of refreshing breeze meant the interior was stifling. Add to that the heavier traffic in town that builds up next to the bridge works, the effect of getting stuck next to an open air garbage truck in 35C heat was not nice. (I know, I was a bin man for 6 years but never was I subjected to that kind of stench.)

By the time I was ready to get off I was experienced enough to be the one to shout "stop" and the driver obligingly pulled over opposite the turning to BDI. When I presented my fare (a 2000 rupiah note) it was not enough so I pulled out a 100,000 bill. The driver's mate/ticket conductor was happy to accept my original offering of 2000 rupiah but the driver was not. After much pocket shuffling he produced my change, stuffed it in my hand, said "OK?" and made to pull off. I kept my hand on the side of the bus while I counted it but by the time I realised he'd short changed me (by 5000 rupiah or 35 pence/55 cents) I couldn't keep up with him. It must have been a funny sight.

For the trip home I was able to cadge a lift with Rae and Oscar in a taxi for part of the way. The leg out to the office was trouble free and I even got to sit right up front with the driver. I think he was rather proud to have a bula (Indonesian for pale-skinned foreigner, which actually means 'blonde') in his angkot. It must have been unusual to have an expat on board because one passenger who got on remarked to the driver (in Indonesian) that she'd never seen a bula on an angkot before. She was even more surprised when she discovered I understood her.

Monday 8 November 2010

Welcome To The Jungle

Flying in from Jakarta the other week I filmed this from my window.

From Mudblogger

Cue the cheesy rock music!

Wednesday 27 October 2010

Balikpapan on final descent


Flying in from the south I took some photos out of the window with my iPhone. Unfortunately the iPhone camera app doesn't have a stitch mode so they didn't join together particularly seamlessly, and the plane was banking a lot which is why the photo undulates.

Tuesday 26 October 2010

Somebody Really Hates Indonesia

In the last week we've had earthquakes and tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and city-wide flooding in Indonesia. If you didn't know where the country was before, you'll probably know now because the devastation has been topping the news all around the world.


If anyone is worried about us (or more specifically Oscar) then don't, because we are safe. Here comes the science bit so pay attention: Borneo is geologically stable because it is situated on a continental plate and is well back from the subduction zone where the Indian and Indo-Australian Plates are sliding (subducting) under the Eurasian Plate.

That's not to say there is no tectonic activity on Borneo, but there is only one volcano on an island that is twice the size of Germany. Bombalai is way up in the north-east corner of the island, is only 500m high and hasn't erupted in 27,000 years. As for earthquakes, there are no major fault zones running through the island and the last period of mountain building (orogeny) was 11 million years ago.

Or perhaps it is all down to the dragon that is said, according to Indonesian folklore, to sleep below the island and perpetually guard it from disaster?

Friday 22 October 2010

Away, Away On The Saipem 10K

This post comes live from the Saipem 10,000 drillship somewhere in the Makassar Straits.


Yesterday I took a 20 minute chopper ride (not my shortest by the way) in a Huey out to the Saipem 10,000 which is on location offshore Borneo. The purpose of my visit was to reconnoiter the ship to complete a pre rig-up survey, determine the lay of the land and see what facilities the ship has.

As my stay was only 24 hours I had complete the survey lickety-split, which meant 10 hours of cambering over pipework, climbing ladders, squeezing through crawlspaces and crawling along cable racks with a tape measure; so plenty of pictures, notes and sketches. The net result is that apart from having a clearer picture of what the rig-up entails, I got my coveralls dirty for the first time in months. And it felt good!

I also got incredibly sweaty because it's like a cauldron out here. The temperature was over 30C and with all the water around us, plus the lack of breeze, the humidity was 100%. I think I sweated out a couple of kilos, all of which ended up in my clothes. I've never perspired through my coveralls before - they weighed a ton when I took them off. I reckon I was more physically drained from the climate than the physical exertion, and I slept like a log last night.


The last few rig-up issues were completed with a face-to-face with the company man and rig superintendent and now I am ready to fly back home today - just in time for lunch. It was very strange feeling to take a trip offshore knowing I didn't have to work a twelve hour shift for several weeks, and it made me feel like a VIP to come out for one day.

Thursday 21 October 2010

Jakarta Happy Snaps

Here's a quick collection of some of the photos I took while in Jakarta on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Apologies for the low quality - blame Apple.

Wednesday 20 October 2010

One Night In Jakarta

Yesterday I had to pop over to Indonesia's capital city to meet with one of our clients to discuss the Saipem 10k. It was my first time in the city and I knew little about it, but the one thing I'd been warned about was the traffic and how it was necessary to allow yourself a few hours to travel a handful of kilometres. I scoffed at this notion, thinking it was just a newbie scare tactic and it was not possible for traffic to be as bad as everyone was telling me. So as my driver, Ahmad, hurtled from the airport towards downtown Jakarta at speeds in excess of 60kmph I knew it was all fibs.

Not ten minutes into the journey Ahmad bade me look forward to the "welcoming party" that Jakarta had laid on for me - a wall of cars, trucks and buses that stretched towards the skyscrapers at the heart of the city.

Thankfully it wasn't too bad and soon we reached breakneck speeds of nearly 30 kmph! It took us just over an hour to travel the 20 kms to the Geolog office, to pick up Adel and go for lunch at an upscale Thai-Indo fusion restaurant where I spotted an amusingly named dish.

The drive to the client's offices took 1.5 hours and I saw the worst of Jakarta's driving habits emerge when we were hit by a sudden downpour. One positive effect of the rain is that it forces the motorcyclists off the road and our progress was slightly faster at 5kmph. I likened the afternoon comgestion to London, at rush hour, during the 2012 Olympics - but the shocking fact was that there were still 3 hours to go before Jakarta's peak even began I couldn't begin to guess how far we travelled that afternoon because it was impossible to estimate in the stop/start nature of the traffic. At one point I asked Ahmad and he just laughed, saying "What does it matter how far it is when the journey is all about how long it takes?" A wise man that Ahmad.

One succesful meeting over, Adel and I went to Mall Ambassador (1.5 km/45 mims away) so I could do some shopping. Rather than stick to the congested main roads Ahmad took us through the marginally less choked side roads and alleys where cars, motorbikes and pedestrians brushed passed each other with the narrowest of margins. As glossy and sleek Jakarta presents itself as the true face of the city is in the parts only the locals know how to get to (and through). Our little detour probably didn't save us a huge amount of time but it was far more interesting and infinately more lively.

Mall Ambassador is a fantastic place for gadget geeks and I could have spent hours there. Wisely one of the girls from the office went and reccied the place a few days earlier and had located all the items on my shopping list so we just did a whistlestop tour. And within half and hour I had blown $300 on an A C Ryan HD digital media player, a 1Tbyte harddrive, an wireless access point for the player, bootleg copies of Mafia II and the new Call of Duty FPS, a VGA to TV converter and a nice leather case for my iPhone. All in all a good day.

And then it was back into the traffic for an hour long grind to get across the 6km of city that was between us and our hotel. And as luck would have it rush hour was at its peak. There's so point explaining how bad it was because I can't do it justice - suffice to say I know knew what a herd of elephants trying to squeeze down a mousehole looked like.

By the time we got to the hotel it was 8:30pm and our stomachs were doing their best to get our attention. All day I had been planning a raid on McDonalds or Burger King to fulfill my needs for greasy beef. Adel convinced me to try an Arabic restaurant instead, so I happily dined on hummus, lentil soup, pitta bread and (for the first time since leaving Saudi Arabia in 1989) a schwarma. Mmmmm.

So now my trip is over and I've spent an hour whittling down the flight back to Balikpapan by typing this up and taking (crappy) photographs out of the window. I can feel the flight crew getting the aircraft "ready for our initial descent" into Sepinggan Airport so I suspect I haven't got long before I have to switch this off.

I am going to use the remaining time to make a point about initial descents: I used to fly light aircraft and I understand the difference between descending from a cruising altitude to an approach altitude (this is the initial descent) but what is the point an announcing it as such when, to the passenger everything after the seat belt sign goes on for the last time, is one continuous decline in altitude? Is it to give us a falsified impression that the pilots do a little bit more that sit back while the autopilot software does all the flying? I think so, I think so!

Sunday 17 October 2010

They're Here!

My carefully planned bachelor lifestyle was shattered with the arrival of Oscar and Rachel, who have respectively filled the house with toys and rearranged the kitchen. It's a small price to pay to have my family with me again.

Their flight to Indonesia was pretty rubbish by all accounts: little sleep, no children's food and total lack of sympathy or assistance from the Etihad cabin staff. They were pretty shattered when they got to Jakarta, but Oscar rallied and his rampage through the airport was part fueled by the excitement of seeing his Daddy and the thought of getting on another airplane. (I half believe it was mostly the latter.) But once on board the Garuda flight to Balikpapan he promptly fell asleep. By the time I got them back to the house it was nearly 11pm so everyone went straight to bed.

The lack of Zzzz on the way over meant that they crashed through jetlag, and by the end of their first full day they were through the worst of it. We've all had some cuddly lie-ins since then, and I've been showing the family the sights of Balikpapan - not that it takes very long.

Rae showed her fortitude by ably coping with a power outage. She put up with no TV or air conditioning for the first half hour before deciding the temperature and Oscar's boredom had risen to a critical point so I talked her through the process to fire up the generator. Amazingly she did it first time. Well done Rae.

So far we've all been on a few shopping trips to stock the house up with the necessaries and to give Rae and idea of the lay of the land and to see what the malls have on offer. I think she is quietly impressed, particularly by BSB (Balikpapan Super Block), the newest and grandest shopping complex in the city which has pretty much all she could want - especially Matahari which has a fine pair of orange Kicker sandals that caught her eye.

She is meeting with one of the ladies from the Balikpapan International Women's Association so I expect to see some new footwear tonight when I get home.

Monday 11 October 2010

Only A Few Hours Away

By my calculations Rae and Oscar are three hours away now, which puts them somewhere over the Indian Ocean. In one hour I'll be going to the airport to catch my flight to Jakarta to meet them. I decided to tell Rachel that I was coming out - and I'm glad I did because I could hear her stress levels drop by magnitudes when she learned the news.

Sunday 10 October 2010

Not Long Now

In 34 hours I won't be on my own any more as Rachel and Oscar will be here with me. It's been a long 4 weeks and it will be good to see them again, and have a family with me once more.

I'm running a risk posting this but I'm sure she doesn't read anything I write here so I'll chance it: I'm meeting them at Jakarta airport :D I can remember being pretty worn out by the time I got there and I didn't have to cope with a tired and excited Mr Pickle, plus two large suitcases, a pair of carry-on cases and a push chair so I'm sure they'll appreciate the extra pair of arms. Don't any of you, my thousands and thousands of readers, tell her of this surprise.

I have to admit that I'm getting quite anxious about their departure from Britain. Rae is a very capable woman but Oscar is quite a handful. I hope I haven't caused her too much stress during our phonecalls these last few days. Sorry if I have.

Wednesday 6 October 2010

Food For Thought

You get conflicting reports about what is available in Balikpapan. Here are some of the Western items I have seen readily available in Hero, Hypermart, LotteMart (aka Makro) and Foodmart:

Weetbix, Smuckers jelly, porridge oats, Tim Tams, Oreos, rootbeer, cooking oil (not palm oil), bacon, hot dog and burger rolls, Campbells (tinned) soup, fresh pastuerised/homoginised milk, maple syrup and pancake mixes, processed cheese slices, Edam, yoghurt, whipping creme, French's mustard, corn/tortilla chips, mayonaisse, Worchestershire sauce, Kraft macaroni & cheese, crusty French bread, olive oil, baked beans, popcorn, Pringles, custard creams and bourbon biscuits, Betty Crocker cake/brownie mixes, Lurpak butter, hotdogs (beef only), chips, fish fingers, sausages (beef and pork) breaded chicken, scampi, self-raising flour, herbs, nappies, Lays crisps/potato chips (only two flavours though), monthly feminine hygiene products, taco seasoning and shells, jalapeno peppers, salsa, red kidney beans, Ariel washing powder, Heinz tomato sauce, whole frozen turkey, all kinds of pasta, bolonnaise/ragu tomato sauce, donuts.

Now, a lot of these items are very expensive (upwards of x1.5 of their cost in Europe) so it may be that when expats in Balikpapan tell you that you can't get X, Y and Z here they mean you can't get X, Y and Z at reasonable prices. Which is true, but if you hunt around you can find them up to fifty percent cheaper at one supermarket than they are priced at others. And there's no reason why we can't buy local brands or native ingredients instead of the imported stuff because, as long as the product hasn't expired (check the date), the local foods are fine.

Tuesday 5 October 2010

New Kid On The Blog

Rachel has started a blog about her big adventure to Borneo with Oscar.

If you are inclined you can read her shared thoughts and compare it to my experience.

Sunday 3 October 2010

Borneo, Baby!

I've pretty much settled in now that I have overcome my jet lag and the worst pangs of homesickness. At the moment I am really looking forward to getting Rae and Oscar out with me so that we can become a family once again. (Since taking the position as Operations Manager five months ago I have only had four weeks with my family.)

So, where to start? Balikpapan is a very busy place with somewhere between 500,000 and 800,000 people. I'm sure someone knows exactly how many people live here but it's not Wikipedia or the CIA Factbook.

What is certain is that motorbikes outnumber cars 3:1, and driving is an experience. While I was working in Milan this summer some of the guys at Geolog joked that driving in Italy was good training for Indonesia. They don't know how right they were. The road conditions in Balikpapan are pretty good (I've seen worse road surfaces in 1st world European countries) and main roads are all dual lanes with a central reservation. The one major pitfall to this road layout is that there are no roundabouts or junctions which means that to go in the other direction you have to do a u-turn. Unfortunately the designated u-turn locations are not strategically placed so you could find yourself driving half a kilometre or so in the opposite direction before you can turn around. There are no real rules to the road and the only code of conduct is that you keep traffic flowing - if this means stopping to let five motorbikes, three cars and a handcart do a u-turn in the middle of a busy highway then that's what you do. At first (and second and third, etc) glance it all seems very chaotic until you learn the two basic steps that allow you to get where you are going - stay in the right lane and don't worry too much about motorbikes. The bikers are much better at avoiding you than you are of them, and by staying in the right hand lane you won't get stuck behind the small minibuses that hover around the kerb (and pull out without a moments notice) like green hummingbirds. All in all driving isn't that stressful as the Indonesians are not rushy-rushy people and are happy to pootle along at 20 or 30 kmph, and once out of the more congested areas it is possible to get up to 60kmph. Despite all of this it doesn't take long to get your confidence and after a day or two I was driving like a local, albeit a little faster than the average Indonesian driver.

The city has four or five shopping malls, ranging from 15 years old and full of dated shops to new and shiny with all the main Western outlets. Groceries are affordable if you don't rely heavily on the foodstuffs imported from overseas, but good meat is hard to find and you have to be prepared to do a bit of butchering yourself. There is a huge variety of clothing here, from traditional Indonesian designs to the latest Western fashions and none of it is expensive. For instance, I bought a 100% cotton shirt with a batik print at the low low price of USD 20/GBP 13. And this was one of the more expensive shops!

Eating out is very cheap; the local Indonesian restaurants have great food that is palatable to expats and there are a number of fast food places (Pizza Hut, KFC, Doner Kebab and A&W) in the city too. On the outskirts a number of expat friendly bars and restaurants have sprung up but these tend to be on the pricey side in comparison to the average establishment, and serve as a night out destination to allow expats a flavour of home.

Houses in Balikpapan are hard to describe. Firstly there are two populations catered for: those designed for local residents don't have what we would recognise as showers or baths, have outdoor kitchen that don't come with fitted cookers, and lack hot water on tap. The houses that have been built (or refitted) for expats do have all the mod cons we would expect but are considerably smaller than a Westerner would be used to. Large houses can be found and in some cases, like my own rental property, have "gourmet" kitchens, luxury bathrooms and enough space to swing a tiger by its tail.

The electrical supply is a problem in Balikpapan. Despite having a huge amount of natural resources like coal, oil and natural gas at its doorstep, the power station is not capable of generating enough juice to supply the whole city and brown outs do occur. Each business and residence is limited the number of watts they can pull from the grid, and quite often it is not enough to keep a property comfortably cool and lit. Generally each hotel and office will have a small generator that is sufficient to provide enough power to run ACs, computer, etc, while private homes have small generators that can supply enough wattage for a couple of hours until the power is back up again. Fortunately my house has ample capacity (5500 watts) to run 3 or 4 ACs, the TV, a computer, the cooker and fridge and most of the lights before the fuse trips. However we only have a small generator (2200 watts) so if the power does go out we'd have to reduce consumption for an hour or two. Thankfully the area we live in has a stable electrical supply and power cuts are only limited to 2 or 3 a month, and last for less than an hour.

As for water, you are never going to get everyone to agree whether it is safe to drink the local supply. Most, if not all the residents of Balikpapan, use bottled water for cooking and drinking, while some use a mixture of bottled and tap water for their everyday use. To be honest I've used the local tap water since the first day I got here and have had no ill effects yet.

Wednesday 22 September 2010

Without A Compass

Coming from Europe there is lots of weirdness to be had in Balikpapan - seeing modern European letters but finding the words undecipherable is one immediate shock - but the thing that gets me the most is that there are no maps of the city. I have always taken maps for granted; whether I am using an OS map, an AA route atlas or the natnav on my iPhone. But there is no official/reliable cartographic data for Balikpapan whatsover. To help resolve this I have started plotting as many points of interest, geographical features and roads using the overhead satellite imagery found on Google maps. Just have a look to the right to see my efforts to date. Hopefully others will find it of some use too.

Thursday 16 September 2010

Gone!

Here I am, sat in Jakarta airport, surrounded by the most foreign culture I've ever experienced in my life and covered in 15 hours worth of airplane grime and sweat. Oddly I feel quite charged despite only having 6 hours sleep in the past 24 hours. I put it down to the coffee, laced with condensed milk, that I have just downed. I may even treat myself to an A&W rootbeer or a Dunkin' Donuts afterwards.

So all in all so far so good. My next report will come from Balikpapan in a day or two after I've recovered (to the best of my ability) from 8 hours of jetlag.

Thursday 9 September 2010

Ready, Set...

This has been a week of finalisation. On Monday we had our last Japanese Encephalytis and rabies jabs, and went down to London to hand in our passports and visa application at the Indonesian embassy. Then on Tuesday we had our last Hep A & B boosters, so now our immune system will give us enough protection from the swarms of bugs that we can survive leaving the airport and get to our house.

And so on Wednesday afternoon I trotted down to London to retrieve the passports. All told it only took an hour and now each of our passports has a funky visa decal which allows us to stay in Indonesia for 1 year.

Just this morning my flight arrangements arrived by email. I am flying out on September 15th with Etihad Airways (not Singapore Airlines as I'd been hoping for): London to Abu Dhabi (2 hour lay over) and then on to Jakarta (2 hour lay over) before arriving in Balikpapan with 17.5 air hours under my belt. Or under my bum as the case may be.

Sunday 29 August 2010

Pin Cushion Effect

I've been at home for just over a week, and I now know what a voodoo doll feels like. In the space of 4 days Rae, Oscar and I have had: diptheria, typhoid, Hep A & B, Japanese encephalitis, rabies, cholera, tetanus, swine flu and polio jabs. We are through the first stage, and only have a handful of boosters to go through over the next couple of weeks. Currently we are down in Pembrokeshire completing the final leg of our Goodbye Everyone tour. Next week the three of us are making an appearance at the Indonesian Embassy in London to submit our passports to get the visas we need. After that I'm going to try and squeeze in an application for a second passport before I leave on September 15th. Rae is mentally gearing up for the 1st of October. Busy days.

Friday 13 August 2010

Indo-NEWS-ia!

I've been dieing to use that headline, and now I finally have some news to post:

I signed my contract yesterday and from September 1st I will be the Junior Operations Manager for Geolog in Balikpapan. What's more, I have been assigned the first rig to my portfolio - the Saipem 10000 drillship, which will be drilling in the seas around Indonesia, East Timor and Australia.

My departure date for Indonesia has been tentatively set for the 15th of September so I have a few weeks to put my affairs in order, and visit friends and family before the big push. And hopefully in that time I'll be able to get my motorbike license too :)

Milanese Holiday

A few weeks ago I was joined in Milan by Rae and Oscar who came out at Geolog's expense for a long weekend. We went to a local waterslide park (which Oscar enjoyed immensely), up to Lake Como where we took a boat ride (which Oscar enjoyed immensely) and then took the Metro (which Oscar enjoyed immensely) into Milan to do a days shopping (which Rachel enjoyed immensely)



Monday 12 July 2010

Cooking Lesson

Once I'd recovered from the long drive I treated myself to a well-earned Full English breakfast. It was well worth the effort I had to go through to track all the ingredients down.


Finding baked beans and bacon in this country isn't easy (or cheap), and the sausages were of the local type rather than the short and chunky variety we eat in Blighty.

Gran Turismo

I've been on a road trip through Italy this week - something like 1800km in 3 days!

One of the guys from the office had to take one of the large sensors (about half the size of an upright piano) down to the most southerly region of Italy and since I hadn't seen this particular piece of hardware in action I got permission to tag along.

We shared the drive down from Milan to Bologna, onto Florence in Tuscany where the landscape is exactly like the pictures in the brochures, passed Rome and Naples (and the mightily impressive Vesuvius), and into the mountains of Basilicata to a small town called Villa d'Agri - 10 hours and 800km on the A1.


After overnighting in the lovely Kiris Hotel we drove up into the mountains to the rig, perched on a clifftop. Unfortunately my interaction was limited by an inflamed muscle in my back which prevented me from doing any heavy lifting, and by Italian Law which stopped me from doing light lifting. Without my assistance the mudlogging crew went about installing the cuttings weight sensor that we'd carted down with us,
and I returned to the hotel to rest my back.


The job went well, and on the next day we drove 250km north-eastwards over the mountains, covered in olive groves, and on to Lucera, a large town with a stunning medieval core, in the breadbasket of Italy. The rolling hills of lowlands were covered by lush fields of grain and plopped in the middle of a field was the second rig on our grand tour. We had a brief visit to the mudlogging unit and performed an inspection on a prototype filter that is part of the gas trap. Since there was plenty of daylight left to the day we decided to drive the 750km back to Milan.


The route along the A14 was 750km from start to finish and took us up the eastern side of Italy, following the coast of the Adriatic Sea and along the way we spotted half a dozen offshore production platforms diligently sucking hydrocarbons out of the bedrock. After so many years working in hundreds of kilometres out in the North Sea it was surprising to see so many rigs close to the shore. Surprisingly the entire coast is given over to bed resorts, and in the last rays of sunlight we could see the beaches were still busy so I suppose that the safety record on these rigs is admirable because any spills would be sure to wash up on the shore. It was almost the next day when we arrived back in Milan, and I got to enjoy a full two day weekend for the first time since I moved here. Good job too - I slept through most of it.