A Heady Mix of Nostalgia, Karaoke, Alcohol and Britishness

It happened that one of the commissioning managers had his 50th birthday last night and the carryings on we had brought back fond memories of after hours drinking back in the UK many years ago. The fact that everyone was steaming drunk helped with the festivities but never the less it was the Brits that once again were the ones that were creating all the merriment and thoroughly enjoying themselves. We had a karaoke machine and I happen to be addicted to getting up and singing, it was a hangover from my dad who had tried to be a semi professional club singer and failed miserably, but he would be playing Bing Crosby, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra constantly and I was forced to listen to the Black and White minstrel show on the radio as a young boy on a Sunday evening while we were all having our evening meal together. So I know all the old songs from way back when and I even started going to Karaoke with my dad a good while back before he lost his marbles. We would do a few duets together so I am an extrovert and love getting up and trying to sing songs and even deliberately destroying a song just for a laugh. So getting back to the party there were a few guys singing most of the songs and we would do old ones and sometimes duets and then as a group we would all sing a song without the music all very crazily and drunk and laughing our asses off at the same time. This is something I think that only Brits could do and do it properly without the feeling of embarrassment. Now can someone tell me why the Brits are so good at this.

The Term Red Neck and its Real Meaning after Working With Texans

I have heard the term redneck used a lot over the years from old cowboy films and police detective series from the USA and never took much notice of it, I just assumed it meant someone who was a little rough around the edges, but I have encountered what can only be described as true thoroughbred Red Necks from the hills whilst working here in Malabo for Marathon oil. I thought I had travelled enough and seen many types of people from all backgrounds but some of the wild bushmen from the outback of the bible belt and the screaming hillbillies have shocked and surprised me and one in particular stands out like an Olympic champion Red Neck. I assumed that when you talk to a normal employee in an oil company that they would be educated and well spoken and polite and discuss things in a normal and calm manner but I was shocked when I was confronted by a wild eyed raging lunatic who was stamping round the control room like he was on a war dance whilst we were trying to discuss the merits of hunting with dogs and that was after one sentence which referred to unnecessary cruelty when hunting with dogs, I was called a huge number of names including queer and motherf**ker and many other things, I did try and calm him down by saying I wasn’t against hunting in general but just cruelty with dogs which as far as he was concerned that seemed to be a challenge to fight him, I was quite intimidated as you would imagine as he is huge, fat and has bulging eyes normally. The film the deliverance surged into my mind and the words squeal like a pig came thundering in my head. I knew I had encountered a red neck and it isn’t nice. I have since seen him in action several times and he was screaming at the top of his voice obviously explaining to someone what they were doing wrong and how to do it properly, the louder they shout the easier the victim can understand, I have been trying to analyse what it is that drives these men and from a few conversations with normal Americans it seems that he is either deranged and dangerous, or he is very uneducated and had a father who used him as a whipping boy and asked him to squeal like a pig, I think it could be all actually. This man I think could under the right circumstances go on a shooting spree killing everyone in sight, and I am not joking when I write this, he is a dangerous killing machine who is wound up like a very large and ugly spring ready to uncoil and lash everyone around him. He is also a very nasty and devious man, he has managed to manipulate his manager by kissing ass all the time and this allows him to maliciously stab people in the back and I for one have been a victim, he complains about little things people do like spending too much time on the internet and being in the office too much and basically anything he can complain about and as he is such a bully, others around him will kiss his ass so as not to suffer the very abuse he gives out, he gets them to inform on what he thinks is not acceptable behaviour and then reports back to his manager. I have witnessed some horrible people over my working life but this man can go down as the nastiest piece of shit I have ever come across. Lets hope Peru and Brazil doesn’t have this kind of real Red Neck working there or I may have to employ the local police assassin to get rid of them for me, I can only take one like that in a lifetime.

Possible Last Night Shift Ever and relief of Completing them

Today I finished what could be my last night shift ever and to be honest the feeling was close to ecstasy. I left site at around 7.30 after turning in all my timesheets for the last two weeks and was calculating in my head how much I would make and how I could never ever have to work night shifts again if I was lucky. If you have been reading the rest of my reports you will see that I had requested a transfer and that I had been expecting to go to Brazil after this job but Brazil is a little further away than I had wanted and now they are sending me to Brazil. Well I can let out the secret that I am a wildlife and conservation nutcase, I am a member of Greenpeace and RSPB and Woodland Trust and a few other and I love looking and listening to wild things. Now the Peru assignment is in the depths of the Amazonian jungle up in the Andes and I can tell you I was more than excited to be going. The web link is

http://www.camisea.com.pe/galeria.asp

This is the link to the gallery of pictures, it is very remote and has its own landing strip, you may ask why do I do this job and support greenpeace and I will reply, I haven’t a f**king clue how I can reconcile it. I am a human being who needs money and food and I do the job that I am best at, but I deplore the destruction and the problems it causes but travelling the world is fantastic and I love it, I have no answer to that question, sorry

But finishing the job today was great, I had to get up early and get back to work at 2.00pm and take over from a guy who was also taking over from me to go on nights is crazy but I need to sleep at night and feel normal. I came home spoke to my wife on the Skype internet Voip and left feeling great. I am in my tiny room getting drunk and eating chilli corn chips and thinking about going back to the UK for a holiday to sell my house as prices have peaked as far as I can see, there is only a crash around the corner but hell, what do I know, I have to clear out the garage and move all my crap to my sister new house in the spare room and see if I can get her to do all the legal stuff for me after I have left, I have promised to pay for her travel to Costa Rica for a holiday whenever she wants but she is chicken and may never go but I will try all the same. Life is a bummer but you have to keep kicking and screaming to get what you want and try and smile at the same time.

Reminded of Things I Wanted to Forget

During the long and hot lonely nights in Malabo, I muse on things long gone and happy times, usually. I had given a general notice to all and sundry about my weblog and hoped all my friends and family would enjoy the tales of such immense stupidity and corporate over indulgence. The first response was from a colleague that had been with me during an event that I had tried to forget but he was expecting it to be the leading article. I can say that we both suffered badly during that event but it all started during one Halloween in Beaumont Texas. I had been working on a large combined cycle power generation project and a group of 4 youngish engineers had decided to go to the town centre to enjoy the festivities in the entertainment district. I was one of the unfortunate 4. The night had started out very nice and we were having a great time dancing a little and having a few beers. We ended up in a nightclub called the black cat and the atmosphere was great. There were lots of people in fancy dress including a Fred Flintstone and a giant pumpkin, I was dancing with a mature lady dressed as a black cat and feeling like having fun. So my colleague was also in the spirit for a wild night and we were not enjoying the beer so lots of folks were having cocktails. Now I can tell you I have only had cocktails once before and that was 15 years ago in Cuba and that was only because that was all they had to drink that was cheap. Local rum mixed with lots of different things to make different cocktails but they all tasted the same basically. Anyhow we agreed to have a cocktail as it was Halloween. We decided on Long Island Iced Teas and to me they sounded rather silly and probably awful but after the first slurp with my straw and sparkler it tasted pretty nice in fact it tasted great nothing like it had ever passed my lips. We were hot and thirsty so this first long island iced tea didn’t take very long to drink so wew ordered some more, I started dancing again with the black cat and Brad who shall remain nameless started dancing with a female colleague of ours, I was having a ball at this point feeling high almost with the great music and great party atmosphere I was dancing like a bull fighter and laughing my ass off. We ordered more long island ice teas, brad did say something about it having 3 shots of liquor in it but I thought they were short changing us as it was Halloween. I was feeling pretty drunk but in control and was still dancing I looked over to see brad wrapped around our female colleague who at the time had fallen out with us as she was a bit silly and we teased her all the time about it, but to see brad trying to give her a tonsillectomy was a shock, I kept dancing and it was as if someone had hit me on the head with a very large rock hammer my legs all of a sudden went weak and very unsteady and I was feeling very sick. I rushed to the toilets as quick as my jelly legs would carry me. I have always been a terrible drinker and I am an expert at throwing up without getting it all over my clothes and I can even get it down the toilet pretty cleanly. So I was squatting down throwing my guts up and I felt a lot better after that but I managed to stagger back to the table next to Brad and the female colleague but instantly I sat down I threw up all over the table, I slid onto the chairs and was throwing up under the table and a lot as well, I remember staggering across the dance floor throwing up everywhere, hopefully not hitting anyone but I cant remember, everything was a blur, I threw up in the toilets again and the next thing I remember was being woken while I was slumped across a table in the entrance by the youngest guy in our group called Joe Miles, and he just told me he was taking me home, he lifted me up and carried me across to the lifts and down to the lobby and outside where I promptly threw up into the flowers and I kept throwing up every two paces across the street to the taxis, he looked at me and he told me afterwards I was smiling at him while I was throwing up. I managed to get in a taxi and not throw up in the car. I stumbled into bed and slept for 5 hours only, I was awoken by the site manager saying the customer wanted to start the unit. I dragged myself out of bed feeling like death and drove 50 miles to the site which was a really was a bad idea as I was still drunk and I don’t condone that sort of behaviour really. After arriving I was informed that the start was cancelled and I could go home, I was pissed off about that. The others arrived one after another all with different shades of hungover in there eyes but none as bad as me. We went out to eat and talked about the night before but they wouldn’t let me forget that I was the oldest guy on site and the most drunk out of his skull on Halloween. My only excuse is that I didn’t realise that long island ice teas had 4 different shots of liquor in them and I had 3 very quickly together. I embarrassed myself so badly that I always try to forget that event but really when I look back at those 12 weeks I had in Texas I had a great time and the guys there I worked with were fantastic and I have kept in touch with them since. One is working in Spain as a Steam Turbine start up engineer and another has gone back to Law school to become a highly paid fat ass lawyer. Joe Miles is still doing the same thing in the US, hopefully keeping other silly older guys out of trouble. Well the girl left and went to medical school, I did contact her once just to congratulate her on the choice, I just wonder if she remembers that she was swapping spit with Brad on the dance floor, something she was probably try to forget Print Article
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how Valium and its Unanticipated Results have changed my Life

Last night I was invited to one of the operator’s birthday party but as I am on night shift it means going to bed late, which I don’t do ever, as I love my sleep. I agreed to go but had reservations as I thought I would fall asleep on a chair and look silly. The guy is a very pleasant calm and polite guy from Louisiana. Which in itself is a miracle and he is recovering from a nasty divorce and I got to know him through messing about with his laptop as normal. Anyhow I went and all the contractors who work with him on the night shift all turned out and even though it was raining a little some of the local girls who are cleaners also came and brought him a cake. His name is Keith but the girls thought he had said key so they call him Llave Grande, Big Key, which I found extremely funny. We were drinking beer and taking pictures and having a great time and after 2 hours I was feeling very tired so I managed to get a lift back to my room by a day guy after I got back I was starting to wake up and I was worried about not getting a good sleep so I took ½ of a Valium which I keep just for this emergency. I fell into bed and fell into a semi drunk sleep. I was blasted out of bed by the telephone, which normally never rings ever. It was one of my colleagues in the office asking me to call the Florence head office as they have a job for me, I was shocked but happy at the same time, I assumed that they were going to tell me my new contract was due and that I was leaving to Brazil, I tried ringing the numbers but got no reply from either and I did try for about 20 minutes but again I was feeling awake by now and feeling desperate about not sleeping so I took the other half of valium and went back to bed, I fell into a very very very deep sleep. When I woke from my slumber I looked at the window blinds and realised it was very dark outside. It took me about 5 minutes for my brain to come round and then I jumped out of bed desperate to know the time and it was 6.10pm and I was late for my shift, never before have I slept this long. I didn’t even take a shower, I just pulled on my old stinky marathon work uniform and dashed out my room and as I was walking into the car park a bus arrived, lucky me as it is a 25 minute walk up to the office from the camp accommodation. I marched into the office after being dropped off and found it empty apart from my manager who was busy again using yahoo messenger to chat to his Venezuelan girlfriend. He said they were at dinner and he asked me if I had spoken to my manager in Florence and I said I couldn’t get hold of him, so he said it was important that I contact him and he gave me his cell phone number, I rang this time and I apologised as soon as he picked it up, he was very nice and told me that the emergency was over and that they had found somebody for the Angola job, WHAT, I was being considered for a job in Angola, I thought I was on my way to Brazil. We chatted about my upcoming contract renewal and he said it wouldn’t be a problem but the Brazil job was a good way off and he needs somebody to go to Peru, Peru I thought, this could be interesting. I said I would be very happy to get away from Malabo and Peru would be a nice break for me. One of the Italian guys who worked here had worked on this project and it is near Machu Pichu the great Inca hidden city. And you fly on a helicopter to get there and it is in the middle of the jungle. It will be an interesting challenge to go to this job and I am very excited about going and he also mentioned the fact that I am still in line for the Brazil job, but I have to train the new guy a lot who is arriving from Pakistan. So I was delighted with the outcome of my use of Valium, not only did I sleep like a baby for 9 hours it also prevented me from having to work in the worlds worst shithole, Angola. So for me taking valium is a great drug for giving me the sleep I need and inadvertently keeping me away from a nasty smelly and dangerous place which would have also been working offshore. The great thing about the valium we get here in Malabo is it is only $3 a box for 30 tablets and I take them in halves which is a cheap and fantastic remedy for disturbed sleep on night shift. The peru site is day shift only and that for me is 75% of the bad things out of the way, I can deal with the assholes I work with easily and difficult jobs are great for passing the time but trying to keep awake on night shift is painful and demoralising, I think it makes you old before your time and makes you sour and miserable, I will be a new guy once I get to Peru and with Brazil on the horizon then I will be Mr Dynamic once more, ready to take on the world again. Lets hope plans don’t change in the next 2 ½ weeks. Print Article
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Black Kites or Circling Crows of Doom

We are very fortunate in Malabo to have a full tropical rainforest in the back garden so as to speak, the camp where we work is on a peninsular below a very large volcano that is dormant but not totally dead. it has erupted in recent times but hopefully shouldn’t go off without any warnings. The older guys who have been here from when the site was built 11 years ago tell the tale of when Mount Cameroon erupted 9 years ago and they took the offshore supply vessel out to Cameroon, which is about 25 miles across the Gulf of Guinea and took pictures, but since marathon oil took over we have no privileges like that anymore. Anyhow getting back to the jungle and the wildlife, from our camp there is nothing but lush forest all the way to the top of the volcano and this does enable lots of birdlife to survive quite well here and there is a huge and thriving population of Black kites that live on and around the camp. I think they like the open grassy areas as they can see much more of there prey here rather than in the forest, they circle round all day up to 20 in a spiralling thermal at a time and then when they are hunting they skim as low as 20 feet over the ground looking for the commonly known rainbow lizards and snakes and even the Snowy egrets that strut around the site like skinny white chickens. the black kites tend to snatch up the prey and then take them to the top of the towers to eat in peace but they leave the remains festering and stinking up there, so whenever a maintenance guy gets up there he is faced with a maggoty mess that he has to kick off to the ground, I think it is only a matter of time until they are actually nesting on the towers as they have great platforms which don’t tend to blow away in the wind unlike the large trees. They have a fantastic majestic flying ability and are really beautiful to look at when we walk around the site. The forest here is very good for the wildlife but the locals have a tendency to eat anything that walks on two of four legs and that includes the local pouched rat. One of the operators was faced with two very flat and well-beaten rats in a control room that had been left by one of the locals after he had caught them, he obviously was going to take them home for supper. There was even a case of theft that involved the body of a 10 foot boa constrictor that had been killed after it stupidly entered the realms of the flesh eaters on site and was hammered by about 10 guys with shovels, it was placed in the control room for taking home later and was stolen by a passing bus driver, all hell broke loose over that one. The island could be a fantastic tourist resort for eco-holiday makers, but the problems of the locals being uneducated peasants and a penchant for killing the local wildlife means that the island is virtually wiped clean of anything worth eating including all the monkeys, which they say are caught in snares and have there backs broken so they cannot make an escape and are sold like in baskets in the bush meat market. The government here doesn’t really care about anything so a few rare and endangered monkeys are nothing to them, fortunately the volcano at the other end of the island is so remote and wild a virtual sanctuary for the remaining monkeys is there but it is only a matter of time before they wipe them all out.
There has been a reprieve for many of the contractors who were told that they were all leaving last trip, they were called back as nothing is complete and the manager who thought he was saving money by dismissing them probably got his arse kicked over it and they are all back playing there normal tedium relieving games again. Singing silly songs until early hours of the morning while the early morning guys are trying to sleep, that sort of thing, but many of the contractors have left for new projects around the world, like Sakhalin island in Russia, so Marathon is struggling to get the necessary guys to complete the commissioning. So the crows are circling in as we pass another deadline for completion and the managers who are direct employees of marathon are looking over their shoulders for the grim reaper to see if there performance has met the approval of the directors. The project started off at $400 million , but as the $1 billion was passed that project manager responsible was officially deleted as incompetent, and another installed, we are now at $1.4 billion and climbing, things are getting close to working but nothing is as it seems and anything can go wrong at this crucial moment, I see the pied crows flying round as a bad omen for things to come, I don’t really care as my project in Brazil is getting closer, should only be about 11 weeks away, but even my contract hasn’t been renewed yet so the crows may be circling for me after all.

Delayed for 10 hours by a Broken Captains Chair

Now I assumed like most people would that safety is the number one priority for airlines followed by punctuality. I cannot agree more with those objectives as I like to arrive at my destination alive and walking rather than dead in a parts bag all burnt and crushed, but that airline objective can get out of hand. As I got on my plane in Costa Rica and sat there just waiting for my on time departure dreading the next 36 hours of travelling I have to do to get to my destination in the dark disease ridden country of Equatorial Guinea, I wasn’t expecting to hear from the Captain. Normal procedure is that he talks to us after take off and tells us how cold it is outside at 30,000 feet, like I care or something, or he tells us if we look out of the window on the left we can see some naked sunbathers in Mexico or some other drivel that he thinks can amuse while we are prisoners at his mercy. So this time when I hear the captain I know that something is wrong, he explains how important safety is and how great the engineers are and how dedicated they are at providing a timely service but the captains chair has broken and the motor has been removed and blah blah blah, so we were kept on the plane for two hours and with a 30 minute interval the captain would give us an update, so finally he said it was fixed and 30 minutes later he said it was screwed and then 10 minutes after that it was fixed by ingeniously using broken parts. Well I am no safety expert but a captains chair is no big deal and just because the vibrating foot massager was broken I don’t give a damn really. So he explained to us the method of repair and how he was going to request a flight slot and we would probably be flying within 1 more hour. Now it has gone 3 hours at this point and I am tired of flying already without leaving the ground and with my next connection lost in Atlanta I am pissed off. So the captain once more came on with a sad voice and told us now that the engineering manager in Atlanta had denied him take off as the seat wasn’t safe and that they would be flying in another seat from Atlanta and then the thing would have to be installed before we could fly and we would now have to disembark and wait for the seat to arrive, I couldn’t believe the fact that a captains chair had been the delaying point for my flight, a dodgy engine yes, bald tyres Ok, leaky landing gear, no problem but a goddam chair for the captain, completely unacceptable, this is safety gone mad. I arrived 10 hours late and had to wait 13 hours before I could change my tickets and leave for a hotel, it was the longest flight I had had for such a short stage. The hotel was free courtesy of Delta Airlines and some food vouchers also I gorged myself on Wendy’s burgers and Atlanta bakers cinnamon rolls with great vanilla coffee. That was something I liked doing and I dream of wendy’s burgers with chilli, since my days working in the USA. I Slept like a baby for 9 hours when I hit the queens size bed, no noise and breakfast was Ok but expensive for a hotel, it is the only way they make money our of Delta , ripping off the voucher users fro meals and drinks. I walked around the grounds for a couple of hours in the spring sunshine and took some fresh air and looked for any wildlife in the gardens, not much to see a few flitting birds I was unable to identify, I thought I saw a mocking bird, it was singing so beautifully that is what caught my attention. But other than that it must have been all shot out 150 years ago. My onward journey was quite uneventful and everything was OK until I arrived in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, I went to customs as usual and opened up my bags the thief who was posing as a customs official just picked up my brand new digital camera that was still in the box as I had bought it in Amsterdam and demanded the receipt, I never thought anything of it other than he was checking, he didn’t say much other than to write $50 in chalk on the table and say “give me”, I was shocked, I tried explaining as you would to a real customs official, “it is mine and I am not selling it”. It dawned on me that I was being robbed by a criminal in a uniform. I sought out my local contact who picks us up and waved him over and explained to him he was trying to steal my money he was waving his arms about and shouting at the guy but I was told to give him $20 and with that he gave back the camera and I was left feeling like a victim of robbery. This was my first face to face meeting with official corruption and it wasn’t a nice feeling. It is obvious that this country is heading the way of Nigeria where corruption and extortion is a normal everyday part of life. The regime here is so corrpt that everone else is poor and is deperate for money and if everyone up the chain of command is demanding a share of the spoils then the guy at the bottom will become more and more ruthless is his demands for money, thank god I am going to Brazil in 12 weeks time.