My Beer Drinking

I am not a heavy beer drinker just a moderate enjoyer of a relaxing beer or two, and a glass of red wine at home at night, but occasionally i go mad and get drunk, i had many drunks when i was in Russia, and i made a great buddy, called Zac Bonenburger, i need to go drinking with him soon, i may travel all the way to India to share a glass or two with him and he can show me the temples

Thoughts of Home, Wife, Beer, Beach

Its that time again, i am leaving Peru and going home and it has been a paperchase all day getting timesheets and reports sent, my desk cleared and my handover report finished for my colleague, letting everybody know that i am leaving, copying one more DVD, White Chicks, first time i have seen that and i was laughing my ass off, so that is now in my external hard drive. all i have left is making sure my taxi is waiting for me in Lima to the Hotel for one night and then i am flying happy style to Costa Rica for some beer and anything else that takes my fancy for the next 27 days

dont they look like German Steinmeisters

Chasing Llmamas and trying not to starve to death

Here in Peru we have at the moment a big expansion going on, they are in the process of developing a second field and putting in two more compressors. They are carrying out seismic work in the jungle to establish the full area of the gas field. I was told there are 1600 men working actually in the jungle itself. They eat sleep and work in the jungle, sleeping under mosquito nets and living as far as I would imagine a pretty miserable existence. For all their hard work, on a 60 days on and 14 days off rotation, sweating and suffering bites and anything else that happens to be in the jungle they are paid the princely sum of Sol 500 a month, that equates to about $100 a month, can you imagine working for that, and I was told that is good pay for a labourer, in Peru there is a basic minimum that employers have to pay and it is less than the $100 a month, so thank the lord I wasn’t born in Peru. Sometimes I complain about my salary and long hours and flying but Jeezus holy hairy mary, that is a miserable wage and I wonder what sort of pitiful life they lead at home, no wonder they chew coca leaves, its just to kill the hunger and dull the misery. That goes back to the horrible images on the TV, it is meant to make all the poor people think they are lucky to have not been murdered or died in that high speed car smash. Out in the mountains and outback of Peru I am told it is even worse for jobs and trying to make a living, that is why everyone under the sun in Peru is heading for Lima, even though it is a desert and is full of dangerous criminals it is better than trying to scratch a living at 15,000 feet with two llamas for company, almost as bad as Kansas City, just kidding.

Running to catch the pretty one, well it is Friday night
Today we had an emergency and we all had to evacuate to the muster point. I arrived and whilst we were all standing about and looking bored I realised that I was quite close to the plant and basically if there had been a large escape of gas and an explosion I would probably have been in the blast zone and died along with the other 100 people stood there, I have now decided that in any future evacuation I will walk down to the river, it is at a lower point than the surrounding land and I could always jump into the water if needed if I saw flames spreading violently, but i would probably get eaten by the Pirahnas or some giant catfish.

I Discovered Selena 10 years after her Death

While I was in the gym tonight someone had put a DVD on and it was a concert by a young woman called Selena. Now I had seen the film about her tragic murder by a psychotic manager but I had never heard or seen anything about her. So I was quite transfixed by the DVD. She did have an air of Gloria Esafan about her she was very dynamic and this concert was the biggest and the last one she ever did. It was quite ironicbeing the Astrodome in Houston. So there were quite a lot of people there and she was performing great. What I noticed more about her than anything was the size of her enormous ass. She was a small framed person and looked typically well shaped for a young woman of 23, but her backside was out of proportion, not that I found it disagreeable in fact the opposite was true. It was bigger and better than JaLo’s and she probably had a better voice than JaLo also. It was a very horrendous murder of a very talented and beautiful woman on the verge of her passing into fame and fortune. Even though I had heard nothing about her I did like her style of Latin music, perhaps it’s the little bit of Spanish I am learning that is giving me the hip swinging rhythm or maybe its my old boots finally falling apart.

Save The Whale and My Beer of Course

I am counting down the last couple of days before I fly my merry way out of the jungle and into the real world of shopping and cooking and chasing the kids around. It all seems so very strange to have to get back into the swing of things, anyone who works this sort of lifestyle knows what I am talking about. I don’t have to make my bed, or clean the shower or sweep up or dust or vacuum, or anything at all, I point a finger at something and say this needs doing and someone does it. So going back to what normal people do in real life is a strange shock, I almost begrudge having to do it. But I am lazy and got a housekeeper to do all the domestic stuff as Jenny, my wife, is studying at university and she is far too busy to look after kids , wash clothes and cook and have me laying around the house and do studies at the same time, so I decided that I cannot bear to do it anymore and asked her if she wouldn’t mind if we got a housekeeper, she was very happy with the decision as I was also, the woman is from Nicaragua and is a very hard worker. As Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in the Americas nearly all of the immigrants from there are great workers as they are happy to be making money and not starving. We pay top wack for her and she works damned hard. The only criticism if you can call it that is she is a soft touch with the little girl we have. Her children are all boys so she spoils the little girl and well its hard for us to stop it as Aura, the housekeeper spends more time with the little girl than Jenny or myself does. So she is more like a granny than a housekeeper, but that isn’t a real complaint is it. So I have to get back into that and then we are going house hunting again as Jenny didn’t find a house that we would have liked, we did find some nice plots and I am going to look at them, and I want to chill at the beach and drink a few beers. I am also getting a chance to go on a field trip with Jenny with all her university colleagues. They are going to investigate some caves to identify the number and species of bats that inhabit them. Now I love bats and this is a great opportunity for me to handle many of them, they have such cute little faces with the silly fleshy noses and huge ears, I did have one here that was more like a ball of fluff than anything else. When I tried to look at its face, its eyes were almost buried in the hair on its head. It was tiny, about the size of my thumb. So I have things to look forward to do and I will try and relax as well. I also want to say that please think about conservation in everything you do in life as we only have one planet to live on and we want to leave it in as good shape as we were born onto it. So remember ‘Save the Whale’.

Get a Life Mr Butterfly Collector

I have spent a while trying to find the names of some of these fantastic butterflies that unfortunately keep dying in the heat exchangers on site and I stumbled upon a site that sells tropical butterflies. Now I obviously new that people collected butterflies but why would anyone want to collect butterflies that they didn’t catch themselves, in fact why would anyone want to collect them anyway, why don’t they just go on holiday and just look at them, it is far more entertaining to look at a live creature than a dead thing, if you want to look at them why don’t you people just get a book with some colour photographs. It is a lot cheaper and it takes up a lot less room and they don’t stink or get eaten by some parasitic bug that eats dead other bugs, this site was wanting $40 for some of the brilliant butterflies, and one rare one was $350 each, now the rarer the butterfly the more expensive and that is an incentive for the locals to catch the last few surviving.

The whole world is going to hell in a hand cart. These collectors of rare birds or reptiles are stripping the whole planet for their selfish entertainment. Do they sit at home looking with an erection thinking ‘I have the last living coral snake’ what is the point? It’s the same with these rich folks who will buy stolen antiques from around the world and ancient treasures. If it wasn’t for the selfish acts of people with too much money and too much time on their hands the world wood be a much safer place for animals and antique treasures. LOOK YOU BUTTERFLY COLLECTORS GET A LIFE OR EVEN BETTER GET A GIRLFRIEND YOU SADDO.


Find out how to play with dead insects.

Are you a Chacalaca

Sunday Morning and 4.30am and the phone blows me out of bed, “yes” I responded, “which unit would you like to shut down”, “unit 2”, I responded once more, which was the wrong answer, well how do they expect me to give them the right answer this time in the morning. I needed to make a software change and download but it is going to have to wait for a while now. I got out of bed and went to the plant and I was still shaking having gotten out of bed in a rush and found the unit shutdown and nobody really needed me to be there but I was awake now and wanted to see what the problem was. They had icing problems in the receiving plant 700 Km away and had to shutdown. So that was it, I was awake and it was dawn. On my way back to my room for a shower I thought I would take a walk down the river at dawn to see what things I could see, I may catch some of the larger mammals maybe. I showered and got my binoculars and camera and went to the river. It was a nice fresh morning but still very humid, maybe 96% humidity. I could here hundreds of parrots screeching up along the river, there is a little island in the river and it was from there that I could here all the noises coming from, flocks of 20 50 100 at a time were flying away from the island. Very noisy and spectacular, they have been doing some sand and gravel extraction from the river bed along our side of the river and the trucks had been moving up and down the pathway leaving a very dusty path and I could see where many creatures large and small had been moving across the dust. Many small bird feet and animals with many legs probably the large millipedes,


There were also 3 tracks that must have been snakes as it was a slither mark not a track, and one was quite large, I have been told that there are many snakes in the area but they never come into the plant as it is too noisy. I walked back along the track and could here this really noisy bird calling, almost like barking, I tried to track it down and finally found some large birds sat in treetops that were calling to other close by pairs of birds. I got a good close view of them and easily identified them from pictures on the internet and they seem to be famous for this early morning racket they call bird song. Chaco Chachalacas

In fact I had mentioned to my wife previously about some large birds here she said they could be Chacalacas and we have them in Costa Rica also and it is common to insult someone who is a gossip by calling them a Chacalaca, very amusing actually. As I got back to the camp the Sunday morning ‘oh praise the wonderful military’ parade was in full swing and much of the what a great country we are and we are proud to be Peruvian and then the national anthem was being played and it always reminds me of a Monty Python thing, not sure why.

picture from www.arthurgrosset.com

Sexy Fat Women

Isn’t it a funny old world that healthy women are suffering just because they have a few extra pounds around the midriff, good gawd, don’t they realise that all men love women with curves. A few extra pounds is exactly what us men like and it is only the goddam fashion magazines that portray heroin chic as something to aim to. I can say that whoever it was that first thought skinny assed women were sexy must have had a sight impediment, no man in his right mind would say a broom stale with some hair is a sexy thing, a gloriously curvy woman is a sight to behold and middle aged women shouldn’t think that being a little overweight is bad for the marriage, it is the lack of sex that ruins a marriage, go on love give him a blowjob now and again and he will never leave you. Wave you sexy plump behind at him in the bedroom he will love you forever, hiding your extra weight and thinking your ugly will make it harder for you to keep your marriage bubbling along nicely. Look at Gwyneth Paltrow, she was that hideous bag of bones and now she has put on some weight since the baby and her fella loves her even more because of it. Power to the Fatties, love ‘em all.

Tragic End to a Magnificent Beast

A sad ending to a great old beast from an earlier prehistoric time, it was 21 feet long and at least 80 years old. While the clearing up operation in New Orleans was underway, the army apparently came across a huge monster of a crocodile that was so big and old that he could only eat corpses, that is what the rumour was, I don’t actually believe that. It probably was after the rotting corpses but it wasn’t really necessary to shoot it, it was just the easiest thing to do rather than get the right people in to deal with it and move it away. It survived the hurricane but died just looking for a takeaway.


Look what big teeth you have grandma

Death by Anaconda

The only thing in this life that is certain is death. We will all die sometime or other and we all hope it is later rather than sooner, I wish all criminals die sooner rather than later but that is another Blog sometime. But people in Peru and other Anaconda inhabited countries never think they are going to die a death by serpentine strangulation and eventually being eaten possibly alive. Some unfortunate soul in Peru was the victim of such a giant anaconda, it doesn’t look that big actually but it was able to eat this prey item and it was so heavy it just sat about waiting for the food to be digested, this is when it was captured and the strange shape in its belly was investigated and everyone was saying “where is Jose, he would love to be here and see this”, not knowing Jose was the strange shape. Nevertheless at least he didn’t get old and miserable or get run over by a bus and had to have his legs amputated, or cut off his own hand while working with his machete in the fields. Life is full of surprises isn’t it



6 More months and he would have been digested

Living in a Land of Peasants

It is funny that I am working again in a country with many uneducated people, I am not pretending to be superior but I am amused by some of the antics that they get up to and some of the ways of these people. As we all know Latin America is a macho culture and some of the guys like to swagger about and there are one or two that actually work out in the gym which again is not a normal thing to do for a peasant. I was watching one the other day and he did nothing but swing his arms about while looking at himself in the mirror and I couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking about. What would motivate a man to swing his arms into a mirror, then do some very light weight work and think he looks good with a huge pot belly and a terrible scruffy beard. The other thing I find amusing in one sense is the unbelievable table manners of people who probably haven’t had a knife and fork to eat with ever before and with the food being effectively free, trying to get as much onto a plate as possible. Watching peasants eating isn’t normally very attractive, this is how the activity usually goes.

1) Firmly plant elbows on table not to be moved under any circumstances, even if you look silly trying to cut some meat and then put it into your mouth by bending your neck until your chin is touching the plate. How some of these guys can eat without moving their elbows is beyond me and even though I have tried the afor said activity I cannot cut meat without lifting my elbows.

2) Switching alternatively between knife and fork not really knowing which to use for what function. Guys tearing meat with a fork while spearing it to the plate with a knife.

3) Trying to shovel food in as quickly as possible so as not to have it stolen by the food demon. I have not got over this one as guys will hover over their food with their nose almost touching the food and ‘shovelling’ is the only term possible for their eating activity. Quite why they do this is probably a childhood thing where kids have their food eaten by older siblings, snatching food off their plates. So guarding it by having your upper body cover most of it while eating very quickly is a self preservation thing.

4) Long live peasants for they provide the rest with amusement

Don’t think it is only the third world that has hideous table manners. I spent many happy hours watching this activity in Norway, in fact they have a way of holding a knife and fork that is more like spear fishing than eating, and once again it was impossible for me to imitate the method. It is unnecessary for me to mention that Americans are known worldwide for the ‘cut up with knife and fork and then hide knife and use fork only’ method while planting one elbow on the table. Please will you all look around you next time your eating in public and see how they are using their silverware, it is an education.

Poor Spanish Dirt Farmer and Gas Turbine Engineer

My Spanish is coming along pretty slowly but I am being forced to listen and try to talk to the operators on the plant as they only speak Spanish and it is good for me to learn the hard way. I am also teaching basic gas turbine operations to the operators and with the help of the supervisor to translate and I am making easy work of it , even though this is my first time doing actual proper training, the problem is that these guys are only operators and they don’t really need too much detail but they are smart enough to know what sort of questions to ask about the combustion philosophy, which is very tricky and I am no expert so I mumble about modes of combustion and operating curves and relationships between NOx productions and flame temperatures. This makes me seem clever and they smile as though they understand but in truth I know as much about it as they do, I am just using the words in a clever way. They all seem very happy and it breaks the ice between foreign engineer and local operators so they all say hello and try their English but I am still lost in a conversation unless they talk very slowly like talking to a baby, basically that is what I am a Spanish baby.

I have actually been doing some proper work this last few days and it was quite enjoyable, I have been feeling unused and at a loose end for quite some time so doing some active work was OK. They had a shutdown on the plant and I had the opportunity to tackle many of the outstanding problems that had accumulated over the running of the plant for the last 6 months. I looked at the punch list of items and they I realised that I had no instructions for how to tackle them, in my total laziness I forgot to think about asking what each item needs to be finished. So at step one I was lost like a lamb in a snowstorm. So I did the only thing I could, I floundered about pointing my finger at anything that looked like it needed fixing and said that needs fixing. There were many things that I had found that needed fixing but it was basically a cover for me not knowing what really needed doing. We did complete many things but many more need attention still but I did feel very useful and all the guys working for me thought I knew what I was doing so that is the main thing, never let them think your nothing other than an engineering guru. And I was still able to do my butterfly rescue work and I am now getting all the guys on the plant looking at how beautiful they are and I get people coming to my office to look at my collection of dead ones. So my activities may encourage some conservation work and change a few attitudes eventually.

I have been here long enough now that I am starting to pine for the fiords of home in Costa Rica and only a Monty Python addict would understand that phrase. I am wanting my home comforts and a few beers and a relaxing time at the beach, which as I am hunting a house on the beach it is a good excuse to go drinking and dancing and taking some sun. The house we were told about that was so cheap did in fact turn out to be too good to be true, yes it wasn’t true at all. It was neither for sale or repossessed by the bank so we are back to square one, we need firstly to get a place to rent so that whatever we do we have somewhere to sleep at Christmas near the beach but I am not going to pay a lot of money for that. I could still end up buying a rundown farm in the hills and building a house there for me. Who knows if I save enough money I will quit and start being a poor dirt farmer. Print Article
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Desperate Pleadings for Forgiveness over my Nasty Deed

Dear Father I have sinned and I am here asking for divine forgiveness as I repent the sin I have committed. For even though I am a keen lover of wildlife I committed an act against a poor creature that I am surely as big a savage as the said large grasshopper. I wasn’t intending to destroy it out of pure spite or meanness but they are particularly stupid and even when I try to rescue them along with the butterflies they either fly away from me and back into the screens to remain trapped or they spear my fingers with their very pointy spiky hind legs and then still fly back into the screens. So I once again plead for mercy from your holiness and beg forgiveness for that wickedness that overcame me that day. I was feeling frustrated with my efforts to help them, I have given up on the moths as they are all about dead after a full night flying about into the lights and being trapped on the screens for many hours, anyhow and so out of my anger I actually cast them skyward to the heavens for the Hawks to catch and eat. Thy wouldn’t say I wasn’t being kind to the hawks as they had been without for 2 days as it had been raining continuously and they were wheeling around, only 20 feet in the air and that was the lowest I have ever seen thy beautiful creatures thy provided Peru with. Low and behold the hawks took my feast with relish and within 5 seconds of them being cast into the air the hawks had them in there terrifying talons. It was a sight to behold watching them stoop down in full control and I thanked thy holiness for showing me how wonderful thy creations were, but I felt remorse for the poor lowly creatures knowing not I was feeding them to the hawks. So here I am on bended knees asking for thou not to strike me down by lightning or send a curse of a thousand pimples to distort my face. I am asking for absolution and if thy finds it too hard to do, well kiss my ass then instead.

Future thoughts of the Rainy Season To Come

I have seen some pictures of the rainy season here in the Peruvian Jungle and I can tell you it is something I am not really looking forward to, OK I know I live an equally rainy part of the tropics but here there is nothing to do other than hide indoors and feel miserable. I am not looking forward to it one bit. I was shocked that the river rises about 50 feet during this time and as we are not much more above that it made me wonder if we are possible in a flood zone for the plant, I would have a long way to try and run out of the way from the flood waters maybe over a mile to get to higher ground. So I am trying not to think about it too much, the flipside of it is that it is the dry season back home in Costa Rica so at least I get to see some nice weather there.

Remote House Hunting in Costa Rica

I am in constant contact with my wife who at present is seeking a place for us to rent in the small town in the south of Costa Rica where we intend to move to before Christmas. Now I am aware that gossip is a worldwide thing and Costa Rica is not immune to that sort of thing but some of the tales we have been told about houses down there are so goddam silly. Some of the houses we were told about when we first started looking were supposedly repossessed by the banks and for sale very cheap. This has been a total fabrication by the gossip mongers of that town. They were probably being mean about some folks who don’t mix that much, saying they were broke or moving out just to cause some scandal. So when Jenny was door knocking and asking in the banks we got a totally different answer to what we were expecting. Of course the properties are much cheaper than in San Jose but we have found some that are even cheaper than we thought. There was a block built house in the town centre, away from the nice part that was only $1,000. It was probably a very small thing with only 3 or 4 rooms in total, but for a backpacker wanting to stay in Costa Rica for a year then it would be a perfect place. But for me and my family it would be a horror story.
Jenny was told about a farm that was for sale at $60,000 and being 250 acres but it was much further away and I am not a farmer but I am tempted by the large size of it and it would be great to try and turn into a fruit farm and general play thing but I am not yet at that point. If I were retiring then it is something I may consider. She was obviously talking to the right people as she was starting to get phone calls out of the blue from friends of people Jenny had spoken to and offering her houses and plots to build on, including a huge thing that wasn’t quite finished but Jenny said it was ugly and on a busy street corner away from the nice quiet are we are desperate for, she is meeting a woman doctor this afternoon and looking at 3 small plots that could be turned into one and in the perfect spot next to the airstrip and with no through traffic but it has no trees to speak of but they really do grow quickly there. We’ll see what the offers come in like over the next few days.

Tinky Winky's Wild PArty

I have just found Tnky Winky having a wild and crazy party in the office while i was out giving a training course, it had had a crazy blue hair do and they all had been drinking fermented nectar, they were staggering around the place and playing very loud music , it will all have to stop

Tinky Winky's Playful Nature

Today Tinky Winky was very playful and i spent ages looking for him adter i had breakfast, i could here him giggling but he wouldn't tell me where he was. I finally found him hiding in one of the draws what a silly billy he is


i wonder what other games he is going to play later today

Peruvian Folklore Tales of the unexpected

I have been chatting to some of the engineers and mechanics who work on the site and who love to practise there English, but even though these guys are pretty well educated they still start telling tales of strange things in Peru. They invoke traditional Peruvian folklore about strange creatures that I found so funny but I had to keep a straight face when told so as not to give offence. I was told one day of a strange and mighty butterfly that is enormous and extremely beautiful and that I was never to touch it under any circumstances. The reason being it had the head of a reptile and could give me a poisonous bite, he told me with almost a whisper and with that wild eyed look of a weary sailor. I couldn’t quite believe my ears when he said that. This well educated man telling me silly stuff like that. We all know that all moths and butterflies are nectar feeders and have no mouth parts to speak of at all, so to say it had a bite that was poisonous was almost ludicrous but this is Peru after all and the Incas may have given them many folk tales to listen to. Today I was told of a mighty bird of prey that only feeds at night and eats monkeys only. So I asked if it was an owl and I was told no, there are a few birds that feed at night but not any large eagles I know of that can see at night. Only owls do that and they are better feeders at dawn or dusk, but he was insistent about his huge monkey eating night eagle. It is my challenge to find the most outrageous Peruvian folk tale now to see if it beats Bigfoot or the Yeti. We will see.

My Only Friend and Playful Pet Tinky Winky

I have been having some fun with my pet butterfly called Tinky Winky,


and he has been giving me hours of fun watching him play tag with his friends


and even attempting to have sex with a wasp of all things


I need to get out of this place, I think I have finally flipped and need some weeks on holiday,

No Social Life and My Pet Butterfly

I am keeping up to date with my old buddies and reading about there social activities and how much fun they are having and I am all of a sudden feeling depressed at the total lack of fun I am having here in the jungle. As a professional engineer I can hack working anywhere for any length of time but I don’t have to enjoy it and I am not enjoying working here as there is nothing to do at all. They have a little Gym to work out in and a pool room that is always busy. But the cable TV is the best your going to get, fighting over the karaoke is something that happens now and again but doesn’t start until 9.30pm and that is almost my bed time here. I am struggling to keep my bedtime at 10pm and my eyes are closing at anywhere between 8.30 pm onwards, so I have decided that I must get a relocation to a destination that inspires me to have some fun and start being a normal life and soul of the party again. Even in Malabo in Equatorial Guinea they had a clubhouse where you could get slaughtered and have a full night laughing and joking and falling about stupidly drunk, but here it is closer to working offshore on a platform than anywhere I have worked for a long time. I am usually sitting in my office with the only company being my Pet Butterfly, that has suffered from heat stress and sits there just waving its antennae at me in that provocative way. I would have a better time down the river with the local native indians, smoking coca leaves and eating monkey brains, but we have been banned, probably too much of a good time would be had

Cultural Differences with TV and Death

I usually catch the morning news with breakfast in the restaurant or canteen, whatever you prefer to call it. And while I am eating my fried eggs and drinking some tropical fresh fruit squash and I am invited to witness first hand horrendous car crashes and incidents of murder and mayhem in full technicolour. Now coming from Britain you never see a dead body on TV. It is described as being morbid and unnecessary and ghoulish even. So to see the police pulling a murdered woman out of a river with the wire used to tie her up with and stop her swimming still around her legs and arms, I found almost sickening. It was like some nasty horror movie and it was quite distasteful. And then the news switches to a car crash in which 2 died, and the police are looking at the crumpled remains of the driver and putting a newspaper over his head but the camera still saw all. And the other driver was laid out on the road with a black trash bag covering his head, it was most disturbing. Then some poor guy who had been the victim of a hit and run was lying on the road with his shoes used as weights for the piece of cardboard covering his body but again the cameraman managed to position his camera to see under the cardboard and see the guys face distorted as it was squashed up against the road surface. I don’t really see the point of catching the nasty side of all this destruction, yes we all know people die in car crashes and get murdered and yes it is all horrible and gruesome and most people would rather not have this shoved in there face while eating. But here in Latin America it is the norm to have it on the TV news and front page of newspapers, perhaps it is to convince most people that your miserable life here in the third world isn’t that bad after all, you were not killed by a murderer or died in a high speed crash so you should be grateful you whiners. Life can be depressing enough without having this stuff force fed to you, if all you have to look forward to everyday is exploitation at work and poor salaries and living in a dust bowl called Lima then perhaps dying in a crash isn’t that bad after all.

Dead Bank Robber on the front of a Costa Rican News paper

The jungle has turned into Scotland again overnight and it is cold today and drizzling with rain and very foggy and some of the guys are hoping the fog lifts as the flights today will be cancelled otherwise. I am still baffled by the cold weather, how come if we are so close to the equator that we can have this very cold wind. Far too miserable for me.

Typical Turbine Engineer

Turbine Engineer are a strange bunch of folks but mostly great to be around and I would trust my life with everyone of them. It is something about the job that makes some very tough and determined individuals. We are always faced with adversity and very stressful situations. When the turbine has a problem everyone is pointing the finger at you and demanding that you get it fixed immediately. So we are all formed into these strange characters that can laugh in the face of death as we have seen worse when working. My old buddies are working all around the world now and in some very strange environments. I have a few buddies from the USA who I have known for a few years and one was working in Iraq along with many other guys, trying to earn a few dollars and keep body and soul together. He just laughed about the extremists and that they had just a small bomb in the switchyard. He is pictured here with an AK47.


He never said if it was his or some soldier. I have another who is working as the project lead for GE and he is working in some remote part of India and by the things he is writing in his Blog ‘Slyght’ he is having a whale of a time and making sure he gets his tax back for being out of the USA for a whole year. I am getting the impression that he is enjoying his time so much that it will be difficult to get him out of the sub-continent. It takes a certain type of engineer to do field work, a little determined, definitely strong of opinion to force through ones views about the job, very outgoing and an ability to mix with anyone and drink and act stupid. This about fits everyone within the GE field engineering group and many ex-GE guys. I am not sure how long you can actually do this job and survive mentally, its about pacing yourself. You cannot go at it like a bull at a gate constantly, you have to have bouts of insanity. Usually where the drink is cheap and nightclubs don’t shut until the last Turbine engineer is thrown out complaining.

Delegation and Iguanas

I have an important delegation coming around Monday to inspect the plant, it is part of the expansion project that we have here. I will at that event raise the issue of the massive intake of moths into the Air Filtration system that we have installed on the gas turbines and these are not your typical little screen things that you slot in front of A/C systems, no indeed, this monster is of gigantic proportions, it is 50 feet in the air and is a box that is 80 feet wide and 60 feet tall and has three sets of filters that cost in the area of $50,000 to replace and because they have so many lights illuminating the plant it attracts moths from the south pole. It looks like a snow storm when you look up at the floodlights. In a morning around the base of these lights there is a carpet of totally exhausted moths that just hang about to die and this is what hasn’t been sucked up into the turbine. The turbine draws in about 60 cubic meters per second. That is a big volume and it has a significant velocity and the moths get into the slipstream and go right into the filters. The unit does have a cleaning system on it to try and prevent it getting all clogged up but the mass of moths going through must be in the tens of pounds per night. So when this delegation comes Monday I will be making my speech about how we have to minimise the death toll and reduce the lighting scheme and eliminate as much as possible and even change the lighting philosophy. We must only illuminate what is absolutely necessary and not just light everything just in case. if we do not attract them to the plant then they will not be drawn into the turbine and that is basically it. Some of the floodlights are too powerful and emit a wavelength that is more visible to moths but my aim to get rid of them and to have well shaded lighting, pointing downwards to the ground and illuminating just what is needed. The other thing is that the fin fan cooler banks are too close together and create a wind tunnel by having a large recirculating effect, this cannot be changed on the existing plant but can be changed on the layout of the new plant. That is the engineering stuff out of the way, I am still far too excited about the new house to sleep properly and was waking up dreaming about picking my own fruit from the trees in the garden and watching the bats slip out from under the roof at dusk and looking at the green iguanas eating all the vegetables, yes they are vegetarians you know, not flesh eating dinosaurs. So I need some beer and that is 3 weeks away for me and so I need to chill about the house and think about more relaxing things like planting vegetables for the iguanas to eat and putting lots of flowering plants in for the hummingbirds. Life is strange isn’t it.

Graduating as a Chemical Engineer

This week I had a great idea about letting Chemical engineering students know what it is like being a graduate and what sort of work they can expect after graduating. Now I am not what you would call a normal graduate. I was a mature student, being the oldest student in fact my department in Sheffield University had ever had. I did prove myself to be the perfect student, never missed a lecture and graduated with a 1st in Chemical and Process Engineering with a specialty in Biotechnical engineering. Now I did struggle getting a job but as I had loads of experience I was able to drop into commissioning work pretty easy and I have been doing it ever since, I have travelled the globe and gotten fat with eating all the free food that that entails. So my idea was to contact my old department and let them know I had a Blog site running and it covers all the stuff I do at work and what I get involved in. one of my old lecturers though that some of my pictures were just what he needed to show those children what working is about and this picture of me with my hard hat on and elbow deep in a control cabinet full of wires was just what he needed plus a few others of sites and plant from around the world, e also wanted me to give a general description of my working activities and this I also did but I was thinking what are the kids going to think when they see me with a huge moth stuck on my forhead and grinning into my own camera complaining about the fog in the jungle. I tried to think back to the good old days in Sheffield and realised that in fact that would probably entice more kids in chemical engineering as it seems a good laugh and most of the time it really is a great time and very interesting work it is also. So me acting pretty insane is a great advertisement for graduating into a career designing, building and operating large, expensive and typically potentially dangerous equipment. As most students would agree being silly now and again is exactly what you need to make the world go round a little bit more easily

Torture in the Jungle

I have been subjected to torture in the Peruvian Jungle camp and I want all to know and understand the nature of it. I went to the restaurant for lunch at around 12 and upon entering I was forced to endure the most horrendous and miserable music ever written by mankind and even worse, as the music was being played from a nasty cheap system it was all distorted and very loud near the door and everyone else had the same idea as to sit as far away as possible from the din. I was left with no choice but to sit directly in front of the gaddam speakers. Now if you have ever seen one of those 1960’s Mexican western movies with a mariachi band playing cheap out of tune guitars and wailing badly s though they would die if they reduced the volume a little, well the music was the equivalent of that. Cheap nasty guitars and a cheap sound system and a horrible nasty wailing voice overpowering the taste of my chicken salad. What was the point of such a terrible assault on our auditory faculties. Perhaps the gay head chef was pissed off today and he wanted us all to suffer, perhaps the pot washer had turned down his offer of unadulterated hot sex last night and he was trying to send him insane with the music just outside his washing room. perhaps he is actually insane and likes the music. Who can tell but one thing is for certain if I get the chance I will eat the CD that it was on to prevent him ever trying that trick again.

I lost 3 pints of Blood to the biggest mosquito ever

I was taken unawares and i never saw it, i just felt all weak and unsteady on my feet and someone shouted , "Dave whats that in your hair and i looked up to see the biggest mosquiot that has ever walked the earth

how do the hell do you protect yourself against bugs that big, a spray seems pretty pathetic, you need a sawn off shotgun to get those. i will be more attentive in future. You only need 3 of those babies and your dead, you would be sucked dry.

Horror of all Horrors in the Jungle

Today started as any normal day does, tons of miscellaneous mail and people I don’t know asking me lots of question I don’t know the answer to, typical stuff. Then I trundle off to the plant and do my inspections and then the butterfly rescue. This last few days has seen far more butterflies than normal so I have been busy taking many off the screens again pretty tame stuff, but I was confronted by a dark hairy small bat again and it was very cold this time, I scooped it up and kept it in my hands as I walked away from the plant to get it away from any dangers, I looked up and there were many of the Roadside hawks flying around but far away over the other side. I took it maybe 100 yards away and opened my hands to see the face of this tiny creature only 2 inches long and a cute little face, it wasn’t very happy and its feet wee still very cold, I was thinking about putting it in my pocket for a while to let it warm right through and I wish I had. It walked around my hand and then positioned itself for a fall off my hand and started flying away. I was so pleased to have rescued a bat again and I was elated to see it flying away but less than 5 seconds into flight and I see out of the corner of my eye a hawk swooping down at high speed and it scooped up the bat and flew away and started tearing into it as it went.

I was horrified beyond belief, I was shouting obscenities at it as it flew away and cursing that I hadn’t looked around more closely and that I hadn’t walked far enough away to the trees to give it cover or even put in my pocket. I was so totally pissed off about it, I was shocked. I returned to my butterfly rescuing and finished to go to the office and recount my tale of horror to the engineers who asked me if I had started feeding breakfast to the hawks and laughed as they walked away. I can see the funny side but the poor little creature must have thought he was going to survive after all only to be torn apart by a hawk.

The Aliens have landed , so has the ministry official

Well I have discovered an alien myself today and it was so well camouflaged that it took me by surprise and I was amazed at the fantastic adaptation to its environment, it is actually a preying mantis and its wing cases are coloured and shaped like leaves and its body is elongated and coloured like a twig only after looking twice did I realise what it actually was, it was a bit frightening as it is huge. Maybe 6 inches long.

I have my desk full of strange and beautiful insects again and I was introduced to a very nice older women and she took an interest in my butterfly collection and I was explaining to her about the problem we have on site with all the insect being trapped on the cooling fan screens.
I told her that I had tried to get something done about it and nobody seems to take a huge interest as its nothing really in the operation of a gas processing plant. But only after I was told that she is the ministry of mines and energy official that inspects all these plants and makes recommendations to the minister and I am hoping that I haven’t landed myself in the shit by showing her my draws full of butterflies. I could get fired for it and then I may have to go and work in Brazil oh damn.
Well my wife has sent me the pictures of the house in Costa Rica that is for sale at $14,000 and it is OK but a huge garden and it needs a huge amount doing to it maybe another $10,000 but in Costa Rica that is a lot of money,


a buddy of mine in the USA had his basement turned into a room and that cost him $15,000 so I think I could get more done for my money. It is very close to the Teak tree plantations and so I could get the house all floored and walled and ceilings done as that is a nice looking wood. But I may need AC. Let me know what you think of the house

Bowel Function and a Shower of Hairnets and Moths

Well I have a piece of great news for you all and it has been a welcome event for me, my bowel function has been returned back to pre-Turkmenistan levels of perfection. I am having many thoughts about why for so long was I suffering to the point I had become to think I was permanently damaged. I am sure that the Anti-Malarial drugs I was taking must have been a major part of that and I was taking them for 13 months, and then also the fact I was working in Africa with all the miserable bugs that infect the whole continent , we even had a cholera outbreak in the local town which killed many. So basically I was lucky with my problems. So now I am a fully functioning member of the human race again and I am so goddam happy about that. Plus I have to give a huge compliment to the cooks here in Peru, I have spent my last 5 weeks out of 9 here in Peru since I left Malabo and they do cook some very good and if simple food and the level of cleanliness is fantastic, they all wear face masks when cooking and serving and even when washing the pots, hairnets and latex gloves, steady all you pervs.
Well this trip started 5 days ago and it has been the season of the monstrous moths. I have never seen so many and such fantastic colours on moths in my entire life, the tongues on some of the ones in the pics are 20cms long that is 8 inch for all us old farts. So they must feed on some very strange flowers probably orchids as we are in the jungle you know. When I walk around some of the site there are clouds of moth erupting from the walls and floor as they have been resting in the shade and waiting for nightfall to go crazy in the big lights again. I have almost given up saving the moths from the screens as most of the moths are almost dead when I remove them and when I leave them somewhere to escape they are still there the next day but eaten away by the ants so they don’t survive very well after being on the screens all night, I still rescue all the butterflies though. So my desk is now full of giant moths and they would have all the schoolgirls screaming they are so big and scary and have the biggest eyes on any insect I have ever seen.

My Spanish is coming on very slowly and I am very pleased that almost everyone wants to learn English so it gives me no end of pleasure to help them practice, it ends up where they are speaking in English and I reply in Spanish, but very bad Spanish, I don’t feel so embarrassed either about making silly mistakes, they all laugh their asses off at me anyway.
House hunting went good and bad for the wife, she said they want lots of money and the house will need gutting and lots of more money spending on them, so I will have to go and look myself to determine what they need, sounds like everything to me including the roof, they are tin as all the old houses are and they will always leak, they need some new external bathrooms adding to the house and a new kitchen downstairs with perhaps a huge dining room to be able to take food outside. The garden is bigger than she said first time, about 150 meters long and maybe over 100 wide with a creek at the back with lots of fruit trees and iguanas. Sounds like paradise to me.

Alien Life Has Been Discovered and Nobody is Doing Anything About It

Can you imagine the excitement that would be generated if a planet in our solar system had been found to have a carbon based life forms living on it, all the news papers and TV stations would be doing nothing but rave on about it forever. Can you also imagine the amounts of money the worlds industrialised nations would pour into getting spacecraft to investigate it all.

So why is it then that NASA and the European Space agency are spending all this money when the planet on which we live is so full of amazing carbon based life forms that they don’t really give a shit about. It makes a mockery of all the talk of trying to explore the solar system, if they don’t do something very soon about the problems of the planet we will have nowhere to live and nothing to see. Our watery world is 3/5 water covered and is still full of mysteries and undiscovered wonders of Mother Nature. So why don’t they try and fully investigate our own planet. The reason my Dear Watson is that it doesn’t make any money. The space program is all about making money for the companies that are making all these big toys for big boys. What utter bullshit and hypocrisy it all really is. OK OK I know that the space race created Teflon and pushed high tech stuff quicker than it really would have but let's face it, going to the moon hasn’t changed the life of anyone on earth has it and now Bush is talking about going to Mars. What a waste of money, I think the price of gas may put a stop to all that. Another thing is that the new Pope should get to grips with the facts of reality of an overpopulated world. He should finally come into the 21st centuary and let contraception be allowed and get control of the runaway growth in the populations in the third world. This is another reason we will have nothing left to look at. The Chinese will have eaten it all moving things and the Indians will have built shops on all the rest of the unbuilt land. Where will it all end.

Can you imagine the excitement that would be generated if a planet in our solar system had been found to have a carbon based life forms living on it, all the news papers and TV stations would be doing nothing but rave on about it forever. Can you also imagine the amounts of money the worlds industrialised nations would pour into getting spacecraft to investigate it all.

So why is it then that NASA and the European Space agency are spending all this money when the planet on which we live is so full of amazing carbon based life forms that they don’t really give a shit about. It makes a mockery of all the talk of trying to explore the solar system, if they don’t do something very soon about the problems of the planet we will have nowhere to live and nothing to see. Our watery world is 3/5 water covered and is still full of mysteries and undiscovered wonders of Mother Nature. So why don’t they try and fully investigate our own planet. The reason my Dear Watson is that it doesn’t make any money. The space program is all about making money for the companies that are making all these big toys for big boys. What utter bullshit and hypocrisy it all really is. OK OK I know that the space race created Teflon and pushed high tech stuff quicker than it really would have but let's face it, going to the moon hasn’t changed the life of anyone on earth has it and now Bush is talking about going to Mars. What a waste of money, I think the price of gas may put a stop to all that. Another thing is that the new Pope should get to grips with the facts of reality of an overpopulated world. He should finally come into the 21st centuary and let contraception be allowed and get control of the runaway growth in the populations in the third world. This is another reason we will have nothing left to look at. The Chinese will have eaten it all moving things and the Indians will have built shops on all the rest of the unbuilt land. Where will it all end.

Another Reason for not Working Offshore

I have become accustomed to working on land based installations and every time is see some horror story about a unit burning or sinking I feel happy I am not working offshore, I was sent a picture probably from the Gulf of Mexico where a jackup is being hit by what I can only describe as a bolt of lightning from hell.



I know I probably have more chance of being hit by lightning here in the Peruvian jungle than working offshore but I became petrified by the fact I had no escape chance from anything disastrous. In fact working on land could be worse as you are exposed to many things that you never get offshore like snakes and mosquitoes. I have even had to have a Rabies vaccination because I have rescued bats and they have a higher risk of rabies than most animals here in the jungle for some quirk of nature. Why oh why does nature have to be such a bitch, she is rebelling for all the shit that we have done to her. Trying to poison her atmosphere is pissing her off very badly, she will keep hammering everybody with huge storms around the world until she calms down. This last year I have seen so many terrible storms and floods around the world that has claimed so many lives it seems there is no end to the situation, and the fears that the ice caps in the Antarctic will melt and raise the sea level by potentially hundreds of feet is almost bad enough to stop me buying my house on the coast. Perhaps I should buy up the hills so that when they rise I will be on the coast. Jenny has told me she has found her dream house in the town we are looking at buying, it is on a 3 acre plot that backs onto the local airstrip, the house is so big that at present it is divided into 2 houses and rented separately. The old man who cuts the grass and picks the fruit comes free so I was told. We’ll see what the outcome is of that one and I am getting some pictures of it Monday so I’ll add them to the Blog then.

World Economics and the Oil Price and The Roman Empire

I feel some strange thing is happening to the world of late. Things that wouldn’t have happened maybe 10 years or even 5 years ago are popping up all the time. We would have never thought that the USA would have been floundering about during a disaster, it is normally the USA that is the world achiever in supplying what the world’s disasters need. They seem to be more prone to being ignored and criticised when they make decisions. I am feeling that the USA is losing it superpower status compared to what it used to be. Does the USA need a cold war and a cold war enemy to be thriving. Perhaps the economics of what they have been trying to do for the last 30 or 40 years is finally catching up with the realities of economic life. Is it facing the same reality check that Russia has been struggling with the last 10 years. Don’t get me wrong, after working there for almost 3 years I fell in love with the country and the people. But there is something in the air that isn’t quite right about what is going on with the USA today. The energy crisis that is going to hit home pretty soon is going to be the biggest test of reality for the country. We have to someday face the fact that oil is not infinite and will start to run out, maybe in 50 years maybe in 100 but the supply will become a political and world changing fact. It is obvious that China is now becoming the worlds powerhouse and without a doubt can make everything the world needs and at a fraction of what it takes in any other industrialised world. But they cannot let every Chinaman have a car and a Harley and AC and 3 computers. It would drain the oil from the planet very quickly. The time will come very soon when oil is a very expensive commodity and if you think $70 a barrel is expensive think about $700 a barrel, does this sound silly or stuff of dreams I really don’t think so. How much would each of you who read this pay for a gallon of gasoline, I would pay virtually anything to be able to drive my car where I want, maybe $20 a gallon or $40, perhaps 20 times what it is today, how many of you would know how to live without a car, in the USA it would be an impossibility. In Europe it is possible the distances are much smaller and we do it everyday in our very busy small countries. China does do it, the amount of cars is miniscule compared to the rest of the world and they still make everything the world needs. So which country do you think will suffer the most if gasoline does go to $40 a gallon, quite obviously the USA, it would take a dump of catastrophic proportions if oil went to $700 a barrel, but how silly does that really sound. When you have the auction type market for oil that we have right now it only takes a small change in supply for the price to jump $5 or $10 a barrel. Demand for oil is increasing and supply is basically stuck at the maximum it is possible right now, so it will not be long for all those young folks who want a car to keep pushing demand passed the supply and then you are into a richest person buys auction, this is where we can see some nasty things happening to the world economy. You suck all the money out of non oil producing countries and see what happens to world economics. It starts not behaving like predicted by all our fancy economic books. We are living in an age of the Oil empire and eventually it is going to start running out, I think we have a gap of maybe 10 years before the really bad stuff starts happening and where money start looking like nothing but ink coloured paper. I don’t think there are many people who can remember the economic crash of the 1920’s and the reasons behind it but it doesn’t take much rocking of the worlds paper based money banking system to shake it all apart. The Roman Empire was a huge and fantastic thing that lasted the best part of a 1000 years and it eventually fell apart from people who had no respect of their laws and basic theories of life. What would it take to have a collapse of life in our world, $700 a barrel perhaps and all your money in the bank being turned worthless overnight. How would anyone cope with a letter saying “ Dear my Jones”, due to circumstance out of our control, your $2 million is now gone and you’re a penniless Joe or Joelene, how could you survive that , many people in Germany had that letter during the 20’s and that led us to the second world war. So if you follow my argument to the ultimate point, if we have a rise in oil prices that are governed by our market driven economy then we could have a breakdown of law and order as in New Orleans but on a world scale. Who would invade who then and what would you take from your neighbour. Perhaps its being a bit pessimistic and long term but someday we are going to have to face the fact that oil is going to be so horribly expensive that only the rich will be able to afford the prices and we will be back on two feet or two wheels or riding along on horses, now wouldn’t that be a peaceful world to live in, unless your invading France to get your wine for free.

Hurricane Katrina and the ultimate horror

What is it with those miserable thieving assholes that when all around is chaos and death they still want to steal everything in sight, all I can say about what I have seen on the TV is that instant retribution is the only method of dealing with them. I would personally be happy to shoot them in the head and shoot as many of them as I could. I have the utmost contempt for the looters and hopefully as the situation gets worse before it gets better then they may die a horrible and miserable death trying to keep their ill gotten gains. I hope the president let's the police and National Guard to shoot on sight, anyone with stolen goods. It is the most appalling act of selfishness to think about money at a time like this but as you all saw for yourself It seemed to be one group of the community that was doing the most of it but I would allow the shooting of anyone in the act. I have no sympathy for those who say it was an act of desperation, it is an act of barbarity and criminality and they deserve the ultimate act of punishment and meted out without mercy. The National Guard who have probably served in Iraq should be given orders to shoot to kill on sight and a presidential waiver to all involved. They deserve no mercy for this most callous and scandalous act of criminality, I am shocked and sickened to the bottom of my stomach, may the Lord have mercy on their souls as I have none for them.