Departing hopefully for the Last Trip to Malabo

We woke late again like two rich tourist taking an easy life on the continental grand tour. Once more I stuffed myself with food I didn’t really need and that wasn’t that appetising, Jenny loved the croissants and ate a couple even though she is afraid of carbohydrates as she is trying to lose a few pounds. I had to go to the office to try and retrieve my tickets and do mail as it was my last chance for two full days while I was travelling, it was obvious that we didn’t have time to fit any more touring into our trip s Jenny had to be at the airport for 12 to check in, I was catching my flight at 6.55pm so I would have a long 5 hours before I could check in. I arrived in the office at 9.30 to be greeted by the tall Zofia who immediately handed me the tickets for my travel, I think it was a guilty conscience from making me wait in the office all Friday afternoon to get my tickets that didn’t arrive. I did mail and received a very interesting mail from the last installation manager in Malabo who I had kept in touch with for professional reasons. Nothing like networking to get the best jobs. He had been poached by Exxon to carry out testing for them in the Pignone factory for their new compressor projects. Anyhow I had mailed him the few days before I arrived in Florence and he had actually mailed me back to call him and arrange a meeting on the Monday morning. I was so excited that I nearly wet myself, this man is dealing with some big projects and I was hoping I could get on to them with him.We met at the little café near the factory gates and it was like seeing an old school friend, we shook hands and then he was asking about folks back in Malabo and I was telling him all the sordid details and making him laugh and then he started to tell me about the project he is working on. It turns out to be the biggest Liquid Natural Gas project the world has ever seen, with huge compressors never been built before and I was shocked about it, it sounded so exciting and I offered to work for him on this project and he said he would throw my name into the hat when the time came around, I have since found out that he has asked many of the guys here in Malabo already that he would get them all involved with the project as he likes keeping all his buddies around him. I felt like I was on cloud nine and we only stayed an hour as I was wanting to get back to the hotel and finish packing. He obviously had to get back to the sorting out this monster of a project, probably drinking coffee all day with the Italian managers of the project. I floated back to the hotel just thinking about the endless possibilities of it, the biggest drawback is that it is in Qatar, a very very hot part of the world, but it is quite civilised and does have alcohol, and westerners are treated like normal people unlike Saudi. So all in all I was very happy but I am not sure when this thing is going to kick off , maybe another year before anything happens. Jenny and myself were so happy with everything about the trip to Florence we had seen many nice things and I had spoken to a guy who may have a fantastic job for me and I was going to have my last trip to Malabo. We packed in the hotel and I waived Jenny off in departures and went and sat down in the business lunge now I have got my Air France Frequence plus card that gets me into business lounges almost anywhere, I stuffed my face with peanuts and drank a gallon of tomato juice while waiting for my flight. I left on time and arrived in Paris with about a 2-hour wait for my connection. I was hoping that it was going to be empty but the place was crowded with folks for boat crew changes, I went into the business lounge and again stuffed my face with cake and crisps and fruit juice. I read everything that was in English just to kill the time and unfortunately the free computers were out of action so no Internet. I kept killing time and could really relax as the place was more crowded than the departure area upstairs and even screaming babies which makes my hair stand on end. I eventually, out of desperation left the place and sat in the departure area looking round to see if could recognise anyone and not a soul did I see, I was feeling miserable knowing that all the contractors had left and I would be left without a laptop to piss about with and no DVD’s to copy. When I arrived after a reasonable flight I got to the office and saw nearly all the contractor back on site, it turned out they had all been requested to come back for one more trip as the project was far from completion. I felt better straight away. I was given the keys to my room and went for a well earned sleep.