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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
Lakes of Milan
I didn't make it to the Italian Lake region - it was too far, it was too hot and I was too lazy. But I found the next best thing. Not far from the office is the Idroscalo, a large man-made lake that was built to allow flying boats to land at Linate airport.
Nowadays it is a centre watersports activity and has a beach for bathing. I made a quick recce of the lake, sat down for half an hour to watch some guys with RC motor boats, and then went back to my apartment.
Nowadays it is a centre watersports activity and has a beach for bathing. I made a quick recce of the lake, sat down for half an hour to watch some guys with RC motor boats, and then went back to my apartment.
Saturday, 3 July 2010
Komodo Dragon?
Not quite. I spotted this little devil crossing the tiles in my flat. My deft lizard wrangling skills quickly drove it out the door, but not before I managed to snap this award winning photograph of it. I'm sure you'll see this image gracing the cover of a National Geographic soon.
Aside from the very rare mosquito I haven't been bothered by the wildlife of Milan, though I'm given to understand that during August there is such a population boom in mosquitos that most of the locals head for the Italian Lakes to the north.
I hope to make the trip tomorrow in an attempt to reconnoitre the area for day trips when Rachel and Oscar come to visit for a long weekend at the end of the month. Armed with TomTom on my iPhone and Lonely Planet's Italian Lakes guidebook I plan to brave the autostrade, overcome my fear of foreign toll booths and solo the 45 minute drive north. Wish me luck.
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
DOATOM IV
To pick up where I left off, I continued to work in the Geolog yard helping to prepare a brace of mudlogging units for their return into the field. I can see the benefit of doing this as I am sure I'll have to rotate units through the Balikpapan office, but it did get boring when I got to my first double-digit day. I learned a fair amount about how to restock and recondition the equipment and supplies, but the main thing I discovered is how beneficial a good rig down is to ensuring a quick turn around - something I'll be encouraging the Indonesian crews to do.
On the eleventh day I returned to the main production office and carried on building sensors for the upcoming work in Indonesia. My main focus has been working on a gas trap - a device that agitates the mud that has been pumped up from the well and extracts the dissolved gas for analysis by a gas chromatograph inside the mudlogging unit. I built two in parallel with one of the engineers, and then he instructed me to finish off the fifth one on my own. I did manage it, unaided and without any instructions, in four hours but made a few mistakes. Luckily they were spotted and I corrected them before the device was tested.
Having spent two days building this particular type of gas trap I feel I've become one with it, and I have started to see some non-oil industry uses for it. So I'm going to acquire my own and plumb it into the toilet in our Balikpapan house because I'm convinced that it'll reverse the Coriolis Effect and force the water to drain in a Northern Hemisphere fashion. It'll be just like flushing the bog in Britain, and I'm sure the expats from miles around will want to come and enjoy the spectacle.
In the next few days I'm hoping to get fed some current information on the status of the Indonesian contracts so that we can determine a schedule for finishing my training and my extraction from Europe.
Being British it's now time to talk about the weather: the hot and humid weather has finally broken and we've had ran for the last two days. It started on Monday night when a "storm" broke over Milan and dashed the land with a heavy shower. The locals are impressed by the amount of rain that's fallen since but I've seen more rain in ten minutes back in Blighty. I'm not sure whether to pity the Milanese for their lack of precipitory experience or congratulate them for the great summer they get to enjoy.
One thing I'm not sure about is how the mosquitos will reacte to the rain. While it has been hot there haven't been too many and my bite count peaked at sixteen (they're fading now thankfully). Will the current wet conditions cause a population explosion? Hopefully it will all happen next week while I'm back home in Huntingdon.
On the eleventh day I returned to the main production office and carried on building sensors for the upcoming work in Indonesia. My main focus has been working on a gas trap - a device that agitates the mud that has been pumped up from the well and extracts the dissolved gas for analysis by a gas chromatograph inside the mudlogging unit. I built two in parallel with one of the engineers, and then he instructed me to finish off the fifth one on my own. I did manage it, unaided and without any instructions, in four hours but made a few mistakes. Luckily they were spotted and I corrected them before the device was tested.
Having spent two days building this particular type of gas trap I feel I've become one with it, and I have started to see some non-oil industry uses for it. So I'm going to acquire my own and plumb it into the toilet in our Balikpapan house because I'm convinced that it'll reverse the Coriolis Effect and force the water to drain in a Northern Hemisphere fashion. It'll be just like flushing the bog in Britain, and I'm sure the expats from miles around will want to come and enjoy the spectacle.
In the next few days I'm hoping to get fed some current information on the status of the Indonesian contracts so that we can determine a schedule for finishing my training and my extraction from Europe.
Being British it's now time to talk about the weather: the hot and humid weather has finally broken and we've had ran for the last two days. It started on Monday night when a "storm" broke over Milan and dashed the land with a heavy shower. The locals are impressed by the amount of rain that's fallen since but I've seen more rain in ten minutes back in Blighty. I'm not sure whether to pity the Milanese for their lack of precipitory experience or congratulate them for the great summer they get to enjoy.
One thing I'm not sure about is how the mosquitos will reacte to the rain. While it has been hot there haven't been too many and my bite count peaked at sixteen (they're fading now thankfully). Will the current wet conditions cause a population explosion? Hopefully it will all happen next week while I'm back home in Huntingdon.
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
Photopalooza
Monday, 31 May 2010
DOATOM III
It is now the start of my second week and I have spent the day finishing off the pit level sensors (and catching a faulty sensor during the testing process), cloning the hard drives for the four main PCs and three additional computers that each mudlogging unit uses, shuttling them to the production yard a couple of kilometres away, and starting the two gas system distribution modules that each of the new logging shacks need. Paulo returned from Indonesia today and I was able to chat with him about Balikpapan and living/working in Indonesia in general. All I can say is I'm even more eager to get there now.
In between all of this activity I was bought lunch by Mr Calleri, the owner of Geolog, and Gionata, the head of Technical Operations. I was quite nervous and worried that perhaps I was being taken to a public place so that he could give me some bad news without risking a scene. Thankfully it was an informal lunch and there was no news - good or bad - to share. And the pizza was good too.
In between all of this activity I was bought lunch by Mr Calleri, the owner of Geolog, and Gionata, the head of Technical Operations. I was quite nervous and worried that perhaps I was being taken to a public place so that he could give me some bad news without risking a scene. Thankfully it was an informal lunch and there was no news - good or bad - to share. And the pizza was good too.
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