Cheeky Little Bugger, All The Thanks I Got For Rescuing The Little Bat

All I can say is miserable little shit, I rescued this tiny bat from the screens and what did it do, it bit me hard with its needle like teeth and fetched blood and it wasn’t bothered at all, it was up for the fight, even though I had it pinned quite firmly in my fingers. It was still very chilly and tired from struggling probably but it wasn’t going to make it easy for me. I did just pop it in my pocket finally and it settled down to let me continue my rounds of the screens to see if there were other creatures in need of rescue like butterflies and more bats. I could feel it wriggling in my shirt pocket and I kept looking down and it seemed to finally settle down and was hanging upside down with its feet clasping the edge of my pocket, all very silly really. I got hold of a few big moths that I was going to release and the bat was starting to get twitchy and I didn’t want it trying to jump near the screens and I watched it keep turning round taking a peek out of the pocket and as soon as I got away from the huge fan coolers it climbed out all lone and I put my hand up just in case it fell off but it was up and away in one jump, I was happy after the last failure to keep alive a rescue victim. But all the thanks I got was for it to drop a turd in my hand as it left, I looked in my pocket and two more turds were evident. So this is all the thanks I get, but what can I expect, will one turn round and thank me in perfect english or Spanish.

Giant Raindrops and Aliens

I swear that the raindrops here today are 3 inches in diameter and just hit like a condom full of water. what is it with this place everything seems to be working outside the laws of nature and normal physical laws don’t apply. The people are abnormally small, possible aliens in fact, I was looking round the canteen last night and I was being watched by a guy who had his head only 2 inches from his food and was shovelling in the food like he was leaving on an intergalactic space mission for 4 light years, he wasn’t looking at his food but looking at me in a way that meant if I was to go close to him he would bite me, dark unblinking eyes and with a most peculiar facial shape. It was probably a latex overskin covering his scaly reptilian like alien head. I am convinced the jungle of Amazon is really a cover for alien mining activity and they create all these incredible animals and insects to remind them of home and frighten people away with the giant snakes and other poisonous insects and reptiles. All the murders in Lima are done by aliens who inject cocaine into victims and then suck out all those endorphine type chemicals to sell back on there home planet, sounds like a movie plot I once saw. Perhaps my imagination is running away with itself as I am drinking 20 cups of Mate de Coca tea a day, I am not sure if it is addictive but drinking this herb tea is really nice and even though I am sweating profusely every day I do not user the A/C as it gives me terrible nasal allergies, again probably a reaction to alien scale dust.

The River Urubamba Flooding 50 Foot over Normal

I was told yesterday that the river had flooded above all known levels last week and nobody had told me anything about it, i got the pictures to show how far it had risen, it is over the top of the highest loading dock and that was built higher than the orignal as that keep getting flooded all the time. so now they are looking at building one even higher but are not expecting the floods to get worse as this was once in a generation flood so they said.
Over the road which keeps going down to the lower dock maybe 15 feet


this is over the top of the highest dock


this is the river during the summer about 50 feet lower than now

I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane ( Thursday )

It is that time of month again, no no, yes yes, I am clearing the decks and readying myself for leaving the jungle and getting back to some sort of normality or reality whatever is the correct phrase. This time of month always makes me ponder what it is that I am trying to do with my life and should I be actually doing this and what would I do if I wasn’t doing this. I have tried several times to get myself a normal job but it seems that my experience in Gas Turbines has painted me into a Gas Turbine corner and I am not much use to anyone else. Admitted that is pretty good if I want to keep working with gas turbines as I am in short supply. The reason for that is not many folks are trained in what I do and you only get good by years of experience (Making mistakes) and I am a very experienced. So I am left with the conclusion that I am going to have to keep working in this field of engineering as I make good money and cannot get a job doing anything else. The only way I can make this thing better is if I manage to get a good posting and I am hammering away at my manager to the point he is going to scream at me and threaten to send me to Nigeria or some other shithole in the world. I am wanting to go to the Middle East, not fantastic but I can get a house and take my wife and live a semi normal life. Shopping would be interesting but I could fly back to Europe pretty easy and going to the Far East on holiday would be easy and cheaper but again it isn’t living normally.
What I want to be doing while away from work


I am also thinking about life back in Costa Rica and slipping into sleeping late with no turbine noise and miserable ignorant shits stomping around the accommodation at 5.00am and jumping up and down on the squeaky metal frame beds all night long. God I will not miss working here when they move me. I am looking forward to having a beer and some normal food that doesn’t look like chicken. I am at the point of screaming if I see another chicken leg. I have given up going for breakfast as they even have chicken soup and not much else. You can’t even get toast in the canteen, I have to do that here in the office kitchen so I just stay here now, it is beneficial for my weight as I am still losing a little every week. The wife is going to be very pissed off if I lose too much before I get back as she has been trying hard for 12 months to lose and is failing.
So normal food a few beers and a good nights sleep and I will be a new man again. I am also planning my trip back to Europe over the next couple of months as I think I have sold the house in Spain and that means I am going to have to go and sign the paperwork. I will turn this into an adventure through Europe. I will go back to the UK and see my family and then drive my car which I still have in the garage. My wife is desperate to go to France as she learnt to speak French a few years ago and never was able to practice it in the country of its origin. Then through Spain and I will visit a few work buddies who are working in Spain. Good ole boy Brad from Houston now near Madrid and Oscar from Malabo, who is living in Barcelona. These guys may or may not be there when I drive through but I love to try and get to see them all. I haven’t been to Spain for a good while now and it will be interesting to take a slower drive through and perhaps take in a few more touristy destinations. Maybe stay in Barcelona for a while as it is supposed to be a very nice destination. Maybe a day or two in Madrid, but as you know all the best laid plans of mice and men, all turn to shite when it comes down to it. I will end up driving like a nutcase across the high speed highways without seeing anything getting haemorrhoids and crashing the car in some remote mountain pass. But what is life but not a challenge to beat the humdrum and create some heart racing moments to recount in some drunken bar conversation.

More Dangerous Creatures of the Jungle

New dangerous creature spotted deep in the jungle round here, have been known to attack in groups and will eat any carrots grown by the locals. Total devastation has been created amongst corn patches and locals have gone to extraordinary lengths to try and escape from the cruel claws of the Peruvian guinea pigs. Also crack cocaine using cats have been observed practising their Kung Fu to be able to deal with any daring guinea pig who dares to try and eat their coca plants.

The Murderer has been identified

The Murderer is now in custody awaiting execution for his dastardly deeds. It was a momentous struggle to arrest the said criminal and he put up a shocking fight which included scratching and biting and trying to run away several times even from the confines I put him in. it was purely by accident that the serial killer had let himself be trapped and that I came upon him in the midst of a sleep, probably from eating so many of his victims, in fact he was probably far too heavy for takeoff after the last meal he had. Yes I am talking about the Bertie the serial killer Bat. I found him on some screens where I wasn’t sure that the bats would feed but as soon as I found him there I knew it was the bats that have been killing all the moths and discarding all the wings after the meal. Poor little thing was cold as these bats normally get after getting stuck on the screens, not sure why this one was stuck, could be too fat, could be tired, maybe he just wanted to sleep it off eating so much, who knows but one thing is for sure even if they are stuck I have ever only found one desiccated corpse so even if they do get stuck they may sleep it off during the day and then leave again that night but that seems a bit optimistic as they would get far too cold to fly and perhaps the giant toads that crawl about the bottom of the screens wait for the wind to blow off the dead bats and then they eat the bats. All very plausible as these toads could quite easily eat Bertie as he is so small, again he is one of the tiny species here, not sure how many small species there are here but I read there are over 1000 species world wide and there are many here in the Amazon. So I picked him off the screens and he immediately tried to bit me twice actually and the second time his bite was really hard and I was thankful for taking my Rabies vaccination. I slipped him into my pocket as it is pointless trying to release him there in the wind tunnel around all the cooling fans so I left the plant and took him back to my office and placed him into the box that is now becoming the bat home for abandoned bats. I put a soft pair of leather gloves in the box and push them up against one side so that the bat can hang upside down on the edge of the glove and he seemed to be at home and settled down nicely. At lunch he was scrabbling around in the box and I thought he was desperate to escape and so I took him to the tennis courts and let him go, he managed about 50 meters until he alighted on the fence around the court and I went over to him and he was totally exhausted and he let me pick him up without a fight and so I put him back in the box and went to collect some half dead moths that I will feed him with later today when it is getting dark so he can feel more awake and hungry, last time I did this after a few moths the bat looked as though he had enough energy to fly away. Let's hope I can do the same today.
Latest update, poor little thing is having convulsions and he will not last the night. I will give him a good send off tomorrow.

Medical Prevention in the Tropics

There are some things in the tropics that always frighten people and catching some nasty tropical disease or being infested by a parasite is the big horror. I also have been worried very badly about travelling and working in remote places that have little in the way of medical treatment and have taken as many precautions as possible. The best things is prevention by vaccination for all preventable diseases, this can cover you for yellow fever, which can be a killer, last for 7 years and isn’t a big deal, hepatitis A & B, both easy and hep B is also a potential killer, but is hard to catch. I have also had a few of the vaccinations for minor infections, meningococcal A, a mild bacterial infection that can sometimes give you the brain type infection killing you, so I am now protected against that, I always get my booster for Tetanus and diphtheria which come together. I have had the typhoid but been told it isn’t very effective. I requested the Rabies vaccination as I handle bats here in Peru and there is always a potential for the bats to be carriers, it is a small chance but people do die from Rabies frequently in the third world from being unprotected and here in the south American tropics there are vampire bats that can and do transmit rabies, not deliberately but as a consequence of the lifestyle of drinking blood that is infected. Pity it cannot be eliminated, bats can be vaccinated against rabies, in fact rabies is detected in bats in the UK and Europe and there is now an ongoing vaccination debate to help protect the remaining bats from catching it and passing it on amongst the bat world. These are the things that you can protect yourself from but parasite infection is something you cannot protect yourself against, the most critical one here is Malaria. We are lucky that it is non-existent here in this camp but back in Malabo from onset of fever to death can be less than 24 hours and people did die and usually it was the guys from India, they would say, “we have malaria back in India and I get over it east”, but they forget that there are 4 strains that can make you ill and the Malabo strain causes blood clots in the small capillaries of the brain and kills you very quickly. So they were dieing one a week at one point. There are intestinal parasites that are worms and usually that is from infected meat, here we are Ok as the food is top class, then there are intestinal protozoan which can be very nasty, this is what I caught in Turkmenistan and it makes you feel like shit and you do lose lots of weight but it isn’t nice. I had it for 8 weeks until I was finally diagnosed and treated with the correct anti-biotic. There are parasitic worms that can eat away your skin and these are bad but easily treated if caught soon enough. Also fungal infections can be terrible here in the tropics which can eat away your flesh and be very nasty not your typical athlete’s foot. Finally there are insect parasites that can lay eggs in you and here and in Costa Rica we have the bot fly that lays its eggs in a mosquito bite and the larvae grows in your flesh until it is full size then emerges to become a fly, very horror movie stuff, the picture says it all. So I am as careful as I can be my arm is still aching from the booster for tetanus I had 3 days ago which prompted me to write this Blog about protecting yourself best you can while in the tropics.
Bot Fly Larvae, yikes!!


Quite common ringworm, most kids get this


Elephantitis and this can effect the penis and scrotum just as badly as the legs

Oh For The Joys of Life in a Normal World

What is it that makes a normal world to live ones life in so appealing? I am missing something very important in life, but I don’t really know what it is. I read other Blogs about the things they do and see and feel and I seem to be in an alien world that doesn’t connect to anything they are doing. I work a lot, I seem to live at work which is actually true, my bed is 60 feet from my office and the restaurant is 100 feet the other direction and I can here the machines I operate whining away at night, so basically I am not ever away from work. I don’t have many hobbies to do and I cannot strike up much of a relationship with any of the guys as their rotation is only 14 days so they come and go and I work alone in my office trying to make the days go quicker but surfing and doing stupid things to kill the time. I can exist like this a latter day sistine monk, humble and peaceful, going about my daily chores, rescuing butterflies and bugs and looking for new wildlife around me. I try and keep fit but it all seems like I am living in life like an experimental animal. I feel like I am in an observation room with the almighty being watching me going about my work. He throws problems at me to see how I react and then jots it down in his notepad. How can I have ended up pondering the little mysteries of life so much when I am supposedly a very important person on this job site? I could be suffering the beginnings of a minor depression and I think I need to do something about it. If you read lately that I was feeling like I was in prison, I think that is the first signs of it and I have been hammering on and on to my boss to get me out of this place anything would be better than this I think. I don’t know if I would end up in the desert somewhere or in the nasty jungle of Africa, but I am desperate to get a posting with other guys who I can have a joke with and share my thoughts and fears. Perhaps my company is going to get me a posting where I can take my wife and I can live life like a normal person and have a pet cat and some goldfish, I can get home after a long day and play with the cat and watch the cartoons with the little girl and then have a meal with the wife and a bottle of wine. Watch old movies together, go walking out at night together, who knows, you just do things on the spur of the moment, here, the only thing you do is look out for the big black clouds that can drown you in 60 seconds with rain drops that are 2 inches diameter, this rain has to be different as the surface tension can’t normally make drops that big, or the clouds hold that much rain. When Buddha created the jungle here in south America, he was in a funny mood smoking a huge bob Marley special, he thought he would create giant bugs and millions of snakes, (not that I have seen any yet) and all sorts of strange and amazing creatures and unbelievable rain and monstrous rivers, and short people. What would the UK have looked like if he had been smoking wacky backy at the same time? Would there be fjords in Norway and would Hawaii have had more crazy animals like Madagascar. Wish I had met Buddha, I bet he was a cool guy, great for going out on the town for a few beers and a boogie on down in the local nightclub ecstacising and speeding all night long. Oh Buddha make my life seem normal and give me the patience to suffer all the silly things and time seem like it isn’t wasted.
I had my birthday just before I came back out to Peru and I realised that my life is slipping away, 1 more year closer to the box in the ground and there isn’t anything going on afterwards. This is a one show ticket and I am in a jungle without entertainment and beer and my wife. This has to change and very soon or I will just become a ship jumper and go and spend the rest of my life on the beach in Thailand.

I Think I Have Sold My House In Spain

Today I couldn’t have had better news, no no, not a new posting to some tropical island in the pacific. I got a mail from my Realtor in Spain who has been selling my house for me over the last 3 years, saying that someone is making and offer on it. This has been a long and torrid tale of unbelievable Spanish paperwork and dogmatic endeavours from my realtor (estate agent for the brits). I left Spain almost 3 years ago and I put up my house with the local realtor who I bought it off a year before, it was a spontaneous buy which afterwards I regretted. The weather in southern Spain is not what you would expect. In the summer it is roastingly hot upwards of 40+, it is basically a desert, an extension of the Sahara and the houses there are not really built for that weather, the main bedroom was downstairs to keep away from the heat and still was chokingly hot. But when I was there in the winter of 2001, it was freezing with frosty mornings and bitter winds and again the house is built for that weather also, it was like an ice box. The house needed a proper cavity wall insulation and air conditioning for the heat but didn’t have either. So I was disappointed and looked for pastures new. I never thought it would take 3 years to sell, the problem was it had no garage and was up a hill and again no garden and that put off all the brits, they love a little bit of grass, not that it will grow in the deserts of Andalucía. So I did sell to some stupid young brits who were going to live the life of some runaways , he was going to pick olives and she was going to “do nails”, what a pair of losers, well we had a 6 month time limit to the contract and they paid they deposit and I left for Costa Rica. Well the paperwork was just bogged down in the endless tunnels of the mysterious ministries and after the allotted time they pulled out saying they wouldn’t wait that long and again the house was still empty. Another year passed and then I got the news the paperwork was finally on the notary’s desk for signing and there it sat for another year. So a couple of months ago I was told it had been signed and it was actually going on the market, and today 3 years later and 25,000 Euros more it has had an offer of sorts, they are going to apply for a mortgage and then if it is approved I have to go for a holiday to Spain to pick up the cash sort of and sign my name on the dotted line to say I am happy to get rid of the unliveable ice box and sauna all rolled into one. I had such great plans for it, I was going to install a solar hot water heating system as it shines all year round in that desert and I was going to strip off the roof and put on an extra room, for guests to sleep in the summer and perhaps eating breakfast while overlooking the valley it was situated in, it was in a very nice area up in the mountains just back from the Mediterranean, and infront of the sunroom/breakfast room I was going to put a large patio. It would have cost a lot but would have made it into a very nice place. So I am now deciding what to spend the money on and all that extra money as it has appreciated over the last 3 years. Perhaps a new chevy Tahoe and drive it all the way from Arizona to Costa Rica, cost $33,000 or perhaps a Dodge 3500 truck but knowing me I will end up with a 30 year old jeep costing about $250.

Devils Bugs From The Jungle

The one thing that most people think about in the jungle is giant bugs and to be honest there are some monster bugs out here. There are some cockroaches that are just incredible, 4 inches long and with an amazing transparent wing casings that extend over the entire body, never found a dead one to bring back to the office to photograph yet, some multicoloured things that look like crabs and some just bizarre things that have no description that comes to mind, the one I found yesterday is supposedly the tropical version of the water boatman. But it is far too bizarre to describe and I can only put a picture of it, plus I found the biggest fly ever and it was really heavy, it looked like it had been attacked by a bird as its eyes had been pecked, and I found out that the eyes are actually hollow, just a small outer shell like a motocycle helmet. Enjoy the spectacle of the monsters from the Amazon



Giant Devil Bug



Giant Fly



Giant Ugly Bug, i think it is a water boatman

Microsoft The Evil Empire ???

Why oh why does Microsoft generate so much anger within the computer world. Without windows life would have been a pretty miserable place over the last 15 years, I learned how to do many things including drawing really silly pictures, making lots and lots of crap photographs and looking at pornography on the internet, other than those things that occupied an inordinately large amount of time I have used many programs for industrial use that were all Microsoft based and it was pretty easy to work with them and I have had very few problems with machines. I think it is only the geeks who continuously play with systems and services and try and make it better than MS who destroy the operating system and then complain about it. I have been working on my own laptop this last week doing just the same things as these geeks and ended up with a machine that is fast once it has booted but has a huge memory loss while it is starting and takes about twice as long now. But I had fun doing it. What I did learn are about some of the networking things that Microsoft has built into it for administrators to be able to watch over the office plebs and see what they are up to, this is what I think the geeks are complaining about. The thought that someone called Bill is watching them masturbate over some images of sheep while dressed as Dolly Parton. That is what they cannot except and complain and complain like some whining 10 year old complaining about not being allowed to play with the girl next door after being found stuffing chocolate in her panties, not that I ever was banned from playing with girls that is. One function called WBEM, it logs all things you do, I am not quite sure what it really does but it does some logging and stores it in a log file and then the administrator can access it anytime your on the network and he can see what you have been up to and other than it slowing down the things you do, I also don’t like the idea of someone knowing what I have been doing or looking at, not that I look at pictures of sheep longingly while I am away from home but it is that someone looking over your shoulder thing that is off putting. The only way you can turn it off is change the registry so it is something that only if you really wanted to do can you make the effort, it isn’t like just unchecking a box, you have to change the operating system basically. Plus there are loads of things just sat there from ancient days that have been pulled along into the latest system XP. And these can only be removed by chopping away at the registry. This is not for the faint hearted as if you screw up your machine can only be recovered by reformatting and reloading the operating system. So the fact that Bill gates has made the software that can spy on you he also charges a lot of money for the privilege and then you have to spend hours upon hours of your time downloading the patches to keep your machine alive so the Russian Mafia cannot turn it into a Zombie and start a porn site on your Dell without you knowing. That is a disconcerting thought. I found out that I have a remnant of a virus still sat on my machine from God knows when after I loaded the MSCONFIG:EXE file to my windows 2000 machine and ran it, this is a windows XP file but it runs fine and it showed that I had a hangover called Alice from the W32 Gobster virus. I don’t think it is active as I checked the locations in the registry for it and it has been removed by the anti-virus software. But we cannot blame Bill for the goddam Russian Mafia wanting to steal all our money, it just happens that he made this nice easy software to work with and the Russians found it was full of bugs that make it easy for the Mafia to take control by doing some very easy buffer attacks. But slowly and surely they are making it more and more bullet proof. I only hope that the next version is far more robust and will wring the neck of the viruses before they can infect anything. How can I possibly complain about Bill Gates and his trillion dollar fortune when I have enjoyed playing on them for the last 10 years and use them for basically everything I do. Good on ya Bill and I hope you make another $100 Trillion so I can watch films direct from the interent and cable TV and basically anything that has ever been made and ever been shown on a screen anywhere or even been photographed, I LOVE BILL GATES, he is my hero, I only hate him for the fact it wasn’t me who was that clever and ruthless.

I Have Been Amusing Myself

Nothing much to blog, i spent all day surfing while the unbelievable rain was pounding down.

Coasting On my New Transport, In Francaise

Bonjour tout mon blogbuddies, aujourd'hui j'ai senti comme vie avait changé un petit et c'était tout jusqu'au fait que j'ai mon propre transport, just teasing


Hello all my blogbuddies, today I felt like life had changed a little and it was all down to the fact that I have my own transport, provided by the client here and it has given me a release from the tedium of walking to and fro the plant. Admittedly it isn’t far but far enough to make my feet sore after doing it 3 or 4 or 5 times a day and walking all round the plant. It didn’t make me really tired but just feeling a little worn out and irritated that I had to keep walking all the goddam time. So last week they had a delivery of new bicycles and all the operators got a new one and all the engineers got one and when the top man arrived on site I asked if I could have one, they checked and all had gone but I was offered one of the old ones after it had been through the mechanical workshop. I was sceptical that it would arrive, but true to his word the next day he came smiling to me and offered me the bike he had with him along with lock and chain, as they have a habit of disappearing onto the local boats that deliver good from the next big town down the river that has a road. So yesterday I was scooting about on it and not noticing any difference in my life but today at lunch time I went for a ride out along the river road and found a new lane I hadn’t seen before and I was worried it would end up at the local village where they may eat me or shoot me or something, we are not allowed to make contact with the locals for two reasons. The first being I carry germs that I am immune to and my country has been dealing with for 10,000 years and they tell me that it is possible that I can kill all of them with one sneeze and this has happened before when the first drilling teams got here about 10 years ago. Lots of the local tribes just rolled up their eyes and died where they stood. The other reason and far more important is not to get them into a dependency culture. They don’t wasn’t them sneaking into the plant to offer services to the guys or bringing food to sell or animals or anything, or even having them begging for food and medicine or materials to build houses with. The government is quite happy that they all die alone and out of sight without any help from the outside world and to be honest it would be a good thing as there are too many people out here already. But I could get fired for breaking the rules and that would be a far worse thing to happen and quite distressing it would be for me. I haven’t paid for my house yet.
So I was cycling along this road and it happened to be the old road that leads to the airport buildings and very nice and quiet and scenic almost, wild probably describes it best. There were birds all over the place as they seem to like the small trees and bushes around the road as all the big trees were all cut down while building the plant I think. Some of the giants still stand about but most had been bulldozed or were never there to start with as we are on large sand spit but the river. So I spent about an hour just tootling along nice and slow looking around at the birds and listening to their wonderful jungle calls and even getting off to make no noise at all. It was heaven and I felt like I had taken control of my day away from the company that is keeping me here against my will. So life feels nice and I will sleep a little better and all because I had a bicycle of my own.
My buddy slyght did a drunk Blog last night and it was sooooo funny. It was probably the funniest thing I had read all day, good on yer mate, I need a beer, it sort of releases all the pent up endorphins that get trapped behind all the twisted synatpic ganglion that you have to deal with during the day not shouting at irrelevant things and not cursing at people who urinate on the toilet seat and don’t clean it up like a 5 year old child who wasn’t taught how to do it, perhaps they live in a shanty house and just urinate all over the floor as they are dirt floors. Who knows but I think I could enjoy a beer here as well.

Famous At Last, Almost

I felt so proud of myself today as I got myself published and along with 5 of my photos from Peru. It was accompanied by a special thanks from the editor, I was floating on cloud nine and I didn’t have a care in the world. It was only the company newsletter and with only 1450 employees it is easy to get your letters published and again I was the only letter writer I think as I was the only letter to get published so I cannot go bragging too much but at least I did get it published.
Last night I had to admit that life here in Peru has lost its appeal, the weather in the rainy season is crap and it is just like a summer’s day in the UK. Miserable and overcast and pretty short also, it goes dark about 6 pm. So it is off to bed about 9 pm as there is nothing else to do and the crew start banging about in the accommodation at 5 am so there is no lying in bed late. I have been here for about 2 weeks and it is feeling like I am in prison once more. This remoteness is not good for the soul and I really really need to get out of this jobsite. I cannot focus on the money or the ease of the job or the beauty of the place, especially when the rain is beating down like Noah is going to come floating by. How can I motivate myself, I am ignoring it at the moment by surfing all day long, learning new stuff about entangled photons and quantum computing, this is interesting but willnot do much for my career as a controls engineer. I did learn how to import excel spreadsheets into access to create a database. Something I don’t normally do much of but at least I could do it. I learned how to make plan in Microsoft project and that was so goddam easy to be not worth mentioning but I mentioned it anyhow. I pride myself on keeping all the office paperwork down to an absolute minimum but carrying out everything as quickly as possible and eliminating all redundant and not applicable e-mails, this is good but last for about 30 minutes a day. I really need a very big and difficult project to work on, to keep my brain active and stop me thinking silly and boring things and make me sleep at night. Also I would love to be able to take my wife with me to a project and feel normal at night doing husbandly things like talking and eating together and going out once a week and watching TV together. Normal things that normal people take for granted but I haven’t had for over 7 years. I am not complaining about my job as it is probably the best job on the planet, unless being a dictatorial president with billions of oil dollars and living in LA and Paris, like the president of Equatorial Guinea, isn’t the best job, then I have the second best job in the world. The problem I am having now is that after getting this job in Peru after I asked for it, I am expecting to get a nice job next time now I have also asked for it and that is never the case, I am getting my hopes up for a posting to the deserts of Arabia with my wife and it isn’t going to happen, not in a millions years. I am going to end up in some rotten swamp in Africa, beating off the giant mosquitoes and kidnappers with hyenas and screaming, “ I’m a celebrity get me outta here”. Now that is more like a reality show.
Probably My Next Assignment. These are The Local Police

Giant Butterfly

Today was a typical day in the rainforest. It was grey and overcast and beating it down for a good 6 hours until after lunch when it finally gave in and was just grey. This meant a shorter working day for me. I have no reason to go walking around the plant as, 1 , I would get wet, pretty obvious, 2, there are no butterflies about to rescue, 3, I hate getting wet, pretty obvious again. That’s basically it , I hate rain and I hate getting wet, so I sit in my office watching the busy people walking passed my doorway and say Hola to all who will reply and try and pretend I am busy. Which is pretty hard when the job is going smoothly. So when the rain had finished after lunch and many many pages of the internet later, I went to the plant and had a look round at some of the work which was being undertaken, two new generators being installed and some concrete bases being laid, and the turbo-expander being stripped as it had shit its bearings down its trousers. I was taking a quick look around some of the screens and found a few small butterflies that had hidden well out of the rain and were in need of removing from the screens and I was walking amongst the columns and coolers and and I thought a bird flew very close to my legs round the pumps, it was very quick and very big, the birds here are warblers and I haven’t found the name yet but small things flitting about catching bugs and moths, so I turned quick and this thing had flown away very quickly so I was running around after this thing because it didn’t seem right. Maybe ill or injured or wrapped up in spiders webs, they are huge webs and very strong stuff, I once found a bat wrapped up and dead in a spiders web. So I saw it skipping about and I now realised that it was an insect, moth of butterfly but it was huge, I kept chasing it and I was losing the race, it was quick and moving about the equipment. I kept going and after about a minute of this chase I saw it land. I sneaked up on it and just looked in amazement, this is something that happens all the time here with all the monstrous insects, it was the biggest butterfly I have seen ever. it was like a bird, bigger than the warblers , maybe 6 inches wing tip to wingtip and very long also. It looked relaxed so I crept up on it and clasped it with both hands on its wings to stop it flapping and it was really big in the body, fatter than any moth I have seen here and there are some monsters, this was just astonishing. I was shocked and I walked really fast away from the plant as I didn’t want this fantastic insect to get stuck on the screens. I released this thing and watched it zoom away, it was the fastest butterfly I have seen here and these things do happen very frequently here, even the scales that were left on my fingers were huge in comparison to the ones on the smaller butterflies. I wish I had a good book on the butterflies of Peru and also Costa Rica but they don’t exist, and if they did I bet they would be expensive. So that was my day made.
Recent investigations have demonstrated that in Peru there are more than 3,700 species of butterfly, in other words, 20 percent of all the butterflies that exist in the world. Quite astonishing fact.
I walked back from the plant and went to the gym early and just thought about leaving this place once more and would I ever get such creatures ever again. Probably not but at least I would get a beer and a shop.

very similar to the giant one I saw

Crazy World of Bats

Since I was investigating the world of bats over my moth killers, I knew that bats have crazy facial and head features due to the nature of their echo location mechanisms, but I was never aware of how diverse and crazy they really were. There are bat eating bats here in Latin America , frog eating bats and fruit bats, false vampires and real vampires, but all look pretty cute to me.




Spotted Bat




Ghost Faced Bat




Ghost Faced Bat again




Chapins Free Tailed Bat




What a guy, probably very popular down the local batclub with the chicas

Gruesome Murder in the Jungle

There is murder mystery happening in Malvinas and I am determined to find out who the villain or perpetrator of the crime is. I have been seeing the wings of huge moths all around the plant, lots of them and not on the ground but up on the screens and usually with small fragments of the body still attached to the wing. This means that the killer is eating the moth and then spitting out the wings as they are large and not very tasty as you can imgine. So the spitting means there is some selection going on by the animal. I have a few clues but nothing other than feathers and dung. I originally suspected the Toads as they are huge and there are many around the plant, possibly hundreds but the wings that are left behind have the bits of body so this means the toads cannot have been the killer as they can only swallow and not chew. That leaves birds and bats as the killers, I have seen a few feathers around the plant stuck on the screens but that doesn’t mean they were actually eating the moths and again they cannot chew but just swallow and the moths that keep getting eaten are the biggest and the birds would have been lucky to have been able to swallow them again, there are some birds here called Sandy Nighthawks, that fly at night and eat by catching flying insects, usually small stuff and these moths are big. That leaves only the bats and this was my first and last suspicion as I have only seen small and very small bats on this site but in the dead of the night doesn't mean there are large bats coming into the plant and landing on the screens and eating the moths where they are and spitting out the wings and again there are lots of half eaten bodies as well but mostly wings, so my strongest suspicion is that bats are the killers but to be honest those moths are pretty ugly and probably provoked some response, calling the bats ugly monsters or flicking them the bird, so the bats stroll over and get out the knuckle dusters give the moths a good beating first then tear the wings off them and finally eating them slowly from the extremities first while listening to them beg for mercy while the bats crunch their way through the hard shell and finally the head. Sounds about right for those devilish bats. They would have to be pretty big as the largest one I have found here was about 4 inches long in the body and had a wing span of about 12-15 inches. I have to prove this by actually seeing some large bats flying around the plant but I am always in bed early as I am a crappy sleeper.

Poetic Justice

I have just read a great news item that i had to let you check out, about a guy who threw a mouse on a fire outside his house only to watch in horror as it ran off the fire and back into the house setting it ablaze and totally destroying it. I can only say i hope the mouse survived and what a perfect stroke of poetic justice.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4593682.stm

Lordy Those Darned Compooter Thangs

Well why do i think that i know better than Microsft and play about with the settings and services and registry of my laptop. I have always been a bit of a fiddler with all things and my very nice and untroubled laptop which has never let me down but i still want to make it go faster and faster. So i was finding loads of documents on the net and i was stopping services and screwing about with the registry and I normally put my laptop to sleep and not rebooting so after 4 days of messing about I finally rebooted it was running really really fast but I couldn't get on the internet, I was screwed, I had made innumerable changes and there was no way I could pinpoint what the change was that screwed me. As everything else was running fantastic i was beginning to realise that it must have been one of the services that i had turned off, so i went back in and re-enabled everything and checked the internet after each one and i found out which one was killing the internet, I was ecstatic and hopping and dancing about the office with delight. So i went back and killed all the other services again and the machine was still running all fast again. I found out there are many services running in the background wich allows an administrator to see what programs I had been running and what I had been doing, something I dont want them to really know. There are loads of crappy little services that can allow hackers to take control of your machine so i am stopping all of them. You can even eliminate the little pop ups that tell you to click here to start and minimize and close, but they didnt work but everything else has worked so i am a happy bunny. Funny how small things entertain when bored out of your skull, my machines were running like a dream again and as it keeps raining there are few butterflies to rescue and the river is oscillating up and down in height by 3-4 meters over a few days depending on the amount of rain we get but that is hardly the sort of stuff to keep me excited for more than 2 minutes. tomorrow may bring some relief as my manager may have some news about my next posting. Hope it is Qatar as i would like to take the wife with me and the little girl so i can have some entertainment after work rather than keep watching TV and DVD's.

Geeky Work Blog

Today was a wonderful sunny day and i was actually feeling fine but when i went for lunch all the lights on the plant went out, the whole site was totally blacked out. i ate my lunch as i knew it was going to be a long afternoon.
The plant was flaring gas, a huge flare,
My Panel was flashing more alarms than i had seen since the lightning struck.
I checked and the fire and gas panel was dead.
Someone on the radio was saying that the Co2 was discharging. Oh Sh*t.
The generators are old second hand( Solar) and with not a nice control system and are not from GE.
Should have spent some money and gotten some good generators from GE. PGT5's
spent 2 hours removing the old Co2 bottles and starting one unit
Then spent 2 more hours getting trhe fire and gas panel running again
Then spent 2 more hours sharing the Co2 bottles between the 2 units and starting the second unit.
Unit 2 tripped on overheating compartments.
We found a hidden ventilation damper that was shut. Oh Sh*t again.
spent 1 more hour starting unit 2 again and then went to bed after blogging said action.
It did make the day go quicker and i did get some good training in for the local engineer. so all was not lost and ni did find a new device i hadn't seen before but it cost them dearly. should buy new equipment for the jungle and not old crap with a crappy control system, a bit like buying a valve radio when you really wated an IPod.

Looking For a Route to Work Heaven

I have been looking around at some jobs for project management, even though I am reasonably happy with the assignments and workload at the moment, anything could happen and as a professional I have keep looking for the next step upwards and onwards. There are several huge projects around worldwide that have the type of equipment where I could get a foothold in project management. The biggest by far is the huge Sakhalin II project in Russia, it has a huge LNG project amongst many other things and will require some expertise in gas turbine technology and I am really interested as it seems very interesting if not very very cold in winter but skiing and snowboarding are things I have never tried and I like to try my hand at new things from time to time. I have just been surfing for anything on the web about Sakhalin. I found a great site which was set up for all expats going to Sakhalin, there is a camp for families and it looks very nice indeed, maybe it is for Shell employees only but it is a very nice place to start with,

http://www.globaloutpostservices.com/sakhalin/living.htm

There seems to be a desperate desire by the Russians to make themselves available of the normal things of life there to be able to attract the right sort of people to help develop and run this enormous ( $27 billion ) project and make it run well plus having Shell as a partner makes this easier. Only problem is that I have become accustomed to the warm weather of the tropics and I am not sure I or my wife could stand the bitter cold weather and I have just been reading about a winter cyclone that has beaten the crap out of the south of the island and left it without power for about 5 days, now that could be bad as you wouldn’t have anything that works in the house including central heating. Serious pain when night time temperatures drop to -14 or -20 C. so it is an idea and I have thrown my resume at them to see what they will say, just fishing you know. The other one is the Qatar II gas project. The worlds largest LNG project and I have a contact who is the lead rotating equipment engineer working for the customer, EXXON, and again Qatar isn’t the greatest place in the world but at least they have a normal city with all the normal features of a civilised world. Shops and hotels and bars I think and great connections to the real world. But again the summer temperatures can reach 45 C and that is also very not nice. But at least my lips wouldn’t have cracked and fallen off into the sand unless I had been staked out by some very unfriendly nomads for giving them some abuse for leaving a heavy trail of camel shit across my driveway. But it is easier to get to and a normal life could be had even though it may be a little more expensive, it isn’t very far from the UK or mainland Europe or even the far easy for a quick holiday so we will see what happens, but it looks nice in the Qatar travel web site

http://www.qatarembassy.net/Qatar%20Gallery/Entertainments/

I could have better entertainment than playing with butterflies all day, like snorkelling every weekend and sand buggying,

My Retirement Plan

The word pension and retirement was mentioned in a conversation the other day by a much younger guy here in Peru the other day and it brought into the spotlight the long term and hidden consequences of being a contractor. I basically have no pension plan to speak of, I did a pension assessment in the UK when I was last back there and from all the money I paid in over the years and it appears I would get about £50 a week now, and that isn’t a great deal but convert into dollars and that is about $80 and that is a large retirement sum for when I finally kick off by boots in Costa Rica. I also plan to retire early from this game of world travel and no sleep, I would prefer to stop doing it full time about 55 years old and I need a pot of money ready to be able to go on holidays and buy a nice car now and again. The important thing is living in Costa Rica as the basic cost of a life there is so incredible low that you can have a nice retirement. Listed are costs of life in my new home country on a weekly basis

1, Heating bills =$0 ( even during the cool months it is shorts weather)
2, Electric bills =$2 ( and this is for a family of 4 )
3, Local council taxes =$1
4, Water bill =$1

Locally produced fruit and vegetable are pretty cheap and if you live in the country will be free basically fruits grow all year round.
The imported items from the USA and Japan are expensive at the moment and will come down as the country joins the Central American free trade agreement. Hopefully reducing the price of cars as they have a 40% tax on new and 110% on second hand cars, really old cars are valuable items in Costa Rica, like antiques.
So my planning for my retirement now goes something like. I have my house already, not paid for yet by the way, June the 28th final payment. And I have a small pension from the UK and my costs are about $4 a week so I cannot be bothered to think about a proper pension plan, I will save what I can over the next 10 years or so from my contracting money and I will enjoy life travelling about while I am still physically able and see all those places my mother never got to see. And when I am old and decrepit I can sit on the veranda and watch the sun go down and know the $4 a week I need to find will be OK, I was talking to Cole, a work colleague and his heating bill for New York State was $650 a month during the winter months, that is a killer and his local property taxes are a couple of thousand a year, not what you need as you get older. So I need some items to make my retirement complete, a large tatty straw hat, a vest with holes in it, a tatty pair of shorts and a pair of leather flip flops, I think I can manage that.

Out of The Rain Into The Sun

Today is a hive of activity all over the plant as the sun has come out and flying can now resume with all the fervour of a war scenario. The helicopters are buzzing in and out as mad as any honey bees and delivering guys to outlying drilling sites. The shuttle flights into Lima are going to try and make 3 flights today to bring new people in a take away all the old worn out folks getting ready to have a nervous breakdown after being delayed for 2 extra days. With the sun shining there has been an upsurge in butterfly activity and it must be the season for a small green skipper type butterfly as I have removed many of them from the screens.




last night just before dusk there were hundreds of swifts circling over the plant, in a huge swirling mass obviously hunting for food after having to spend the last 24 hours grounded because of the horrendous rain we have had. They are quite large birds for a swift and I think I have identified them as Chimney Swifts, they are overwintering in the Amazon basin as they breed in the USA in the northern summer. They seem to like the immense amount of insects in this part of the world but here in the camp all mosquitoes and most other insects are non existent as they fumigate on a regular basis and that is OK as it saves me from being eaten alive as being a soft whitey from the far north I have sweet blood and they just love to suck me dry.




I still haven’t got any news on my posting away from Peru, one of my colleagues is now in Korea and I think it is pretty cold up there, why am I really wanting to get away from this nice warm place, I am not sure, something about itchy feet and wanting to see some other parts of the world. We’ll see what happens.

Did I Say Something About Loving The Variability of the Weather

When I went to bed last night it was raining lightly, almost like a drizzle and I thought nothing of it, I had spent a couple of hours doing a mass mailing to update all my contacts about the latest holidays on the Blogsite and I got to bed late maybe 10.30pm and here in Peru that is late as there is nothing to do other than sleep. So I put the TV on and got to the HBO movie channel with Spanish subtitles is I really need to practice more and it was a crappy film but it was the only english speaking channel they have, and I could detect a slightly increasing background noise and I wasn’t sure what it was and when the film ended and I turned off the TV I realised the rain was pounding down on the steel roof of our accommodation, with it being really cheap and nasty it is a tin roof and it sounds like a steel drum band during heavy rain. Well the rain got heavier and heavier and then the thunder started rumbling and the rain was beating like a frenzied Mike Tyson on the roof and it was almost impossible to get to sleep and after an hour rolling around the bed with the humidity being high I finally got to sleep but every time a discharge of lightning I was blown out of bed awake and it was like that all night long. All goddam night and then the alarm clocks started going off from about 4.30am onwards and with the walls being so thin you can here the alarms from 6 rooms away and the building is only 6 rooms long and 2 rooms wide so basically that is everybody in the block. Some hideous old bell ringers and then the fancy play a silly freaking tune digital ones, the worst thing is the lazy wakers, oh I hate them worst of all and I wish a curse of a oscillating hormones on whoever it is. They set the goddam tune playing digital alarm to snooze maybe 5 or 6 times so it keeps going off and then on and then again and again for about 45 minutes, I am going to lose control one of these mornings and start skipping about in the corridor naked shouting obscenities at all the rooms until the culprit is identified, it is really irritating. But the rain never stopped all night and all morning and it is now down to a light drizzle again, it may clear up today but I really would like it to turn blue to lift my tired spirit.

Holiday on the Caribbean part 2

The next day the weather again was clear blue skies and lovely temperatures we played on the beach all day long and I was very good this year by using factor 20 sun cream and I didn’t get burnt at all. We had a surprise with the little girl as she was showing great bravery with the sea, normally terrified of the sea and screaming murder if it went over her ankles this year she was running through the waves and it was so entertaining watching her doing it and screaming in pleasure this time.




There were a few surfers and mostly American students taking their well deserved winter breaks, the waves were quite high maybe 5-6 feet and very long but breaking all at the same time, which was a pity. I went swimming in these waves and remembered not to get out of my depth this time and I found where all the beach had gone. It had been dragged out into the bay and the water was only 3-4 feet deep up to 80 meters out at sea. So it was a great time to swim and try body surfing on the big waves. The water was warm and nice maybe 75 F but again it was pretty murky with lots of leaf and wood debris in the water, but hell this is paradise who cares about a little bit of rubbish in the water.



Beach cabin, Very Pretty


For the next day we planned to go to the national park taking a picnic with us and I could try snorkelling. That night we only got disturbed once with the Italian and his escort who were dancing around the pool at midnight. The next morning I awoke to find my body was covered with large swellings mostly on my legs and hands, it turned out that the mosquitoes had been biting me a lot but only after a couple of days had they started to swell and go red, the little girl was the same but Jenny having been born here in the mosquito swarms doesn’t suffer the swelling only a little itching on the bites. We had a light breakfast of cereal again and decided to take the car to the park entrance and then walk the 5 Km into the park to reach the tip where the coral reef is, the waves were still pounding again in the bay and red warning flags were out to stop swimmers but only applies to people who can read the warnings and still some local idiots were swimming in the rough areas. The walk was nice but we were followed all the way but some 25 local kids who were making lots of noise and just being irritating.




We sat at the tip but the waves were huge across the reef maybe 6-9 foot and looking very dangerous but I was 75 yards away from that I put on my gear and tried to get out there but from the beach side it was very shallow only 2 feet and just all weed and the tide across the reef was very fast making it very hard to make any headway, so after 30 minutes of going half way to the reef and seeing nothing but weed and the very sandy sediment filled water I gave up, it was pointless and I new it I hadn’t seen a fish or anything only 1 large mollusc. I was disappointed, this reef is not worth travelling into the country for, it is far better in Belize or Honduras so I have been told. This is something I want to do 1 year with a buddy of mine, ole Keith. So we spent the next couple of hours out there looking at all the hermit crabs on the trees and beach letting the little girl enjoy having them run across her arms and she was in heaven, we saw some of the capuchin monkeys that have become habituated to the walkers and beg food from them, it looks really cute but it is bad for their behaviour. On out walk back it was getting dusk and it is all swampy and full of standing water and this means more mosquitoes. They were the most aggressive I have ever encountered, they follow along at head height and land on you in full view but are very fast to catch and kill and they were swarming and I was killing them non stop for the hour we had walking back carrying the little girl most of the way as she was lazy and wanted carrying. So I was bitten all over again and was very tired and seen nothing for my long walk to go snorkelling in the turbid waters on the only reef in Costa Rica worth going to. Once again it was that shit syndrome coming into play, the healthy diet thing was also wearing a bit thin only eating tuna and bread and little bits of other stuff so when we got back into town after the walk we went to the local tiny supermarket and bought eggs and ham and sausage for a giant fry up when we got back to the cabina. Oh lordy the fry up tasted like heaven probably the best tasting thing I had eaten in all my life well that week at least. The next day the morning was very fresh and cloudy and the waves were again huge we sat around the pool watching the girl play and get more confident with water,




the sun came out and we were roasting and the humidity was high sweat was pouring off us and to be honest I didn’t really notice it as I am used to it with working in Peru and Malabo was just as humid, I don’t know what I am going to do if I end up being sent to Russia to work for next winter. This was day 4 of our holiday and I was starting to wind down very nicely and we slept in very late maybe 8.00am and I am getting to enjoy that, we had tuna once more for lunch and I am getting to hate it. I started drinking a few more beers than I normally do and I think I am getting to enjoy or perhaps tolerate it a little better, not a good thing. We spent the next day exactly the same just chilling and eating more fried food more beer and trying not to think about my impending departure for Peru. In the afternoon another family arrived and they moved into the room next door to us and the guy was another huge Italian and was a chain smoking coffee drinking arm waving loud guy and I am not sure what the problem with him was as he spent all night in the hammock and being a huge fat guy the beam he was attached to was creaking like an old schooner, all night long snoring and creaking the goddam beam, I was so pissed off I wanted to go out and kill him, the next morning day 6, my legs were covered now in dark red patches from all the mosquito bites and I was feeling pretty lousy from having no sleep and the sky was dull grey and it was blowing quite cool for the Caribbean so we packed all our crap away in the car and drove back to San Jose, refreshed for the holiday but worn out as all holidays do to you. Ready to go into the breach once more for queen and country and my bank account. Peru here we come.

Rainy Season In The Amazonian Jungle

Well officially we are the rainy season and when I first got back into Peru it was gray and raining and it rained a lot the next day and it was surprisingly fresh. I wasn’t happy with the prospect of a miserable and grey month in the jungle getting foot rot and having my skin washed whiter than white with all the rain, but the third day it was a prefect clear blue day and even though we caught a few drops of a passing storm it was a normal day in the tropics. We got 3 days in a row of fantastic weather and once again today it is a typical English summer’s day, all miserable and grey and totally overcast and gloomy, I hate the gloominess of it all, I love blue skies, and it is a British thing I reckon as we get so little of the blue stuff we crave for it all the time and probably that is why I live in Costa Rica. So I now realise that rainy season in the jungle means rains probably everyday but may be a sprinkling or a heavy shower or maybe even full on British stuff, but it is as varied as you can imagine, wonderful.

Happy F*?king New Year

This is my first new year in Peru and to be honest I could have done without being here. The evening dinner had been extended from about 7.00pm up to about 10.00pm and then most folks just sat and waited for the entertainment to happen. the karaoke was fired up and the compare who was a very good singer sang about 4 songs without the words and when it came to start the machine with words it lost the ability to make music, lots of button pressing and wire tugging ensued but to no avail it was dead with the words so I couldn't even attempt to sing any of the beetles songs, as that is all they had in English. So after that the compare became the entertainer and was singing merrily away and the only 5 women in the canteen were dragged up unceremoniously by the guys one after another to dance and were sweating nicely after 15 minutes and at the same time one member of staff was handing out the party hats and streamers and whistles and rattles very slowly and once all the streamers had been thrown the atmosphere had lightened a little and while everyone was blowing the whistle they did the countdown and as we all cheered there was a procession of all the folks moving about the room shaking hands and giving a hug to everyone, the women seemed to be the most popular, the guys were very careful to hold themselves at a angle to avoid groinal contact, and then they all left the room to burn an effigy of a protestant probably, something to be opposite the english version of burning an effigy of a catholic on the 5th of November, that one is the remembering of the execution of a catholic who attempted to assassinate parliament in England about 400 years ago. Anyhow the guy appointed to burn the said effigy was using a rolled up piece of paper and we all know rolled paper has virtually no surface area to get air to the burning paper surface and it was a horrible sight to see him trying to get any reasonable flames going but just as it lit up some idiot threw some olive oil on it in the hope of raising the flames but it did just the opposite nad put out the flames, he again tried lighting the paper on the ground and the oil moron again threw oil on it to hopefully get a boost of flame, this was being watched by 500 people and it was pathetic, I went back into the canteen and with my feet scraped all the loose streamers up into a huge ball and carried them back outside and hung them on the huge fake penis they had created for the protestant effigy ( quite lifelike actually ) and once the mini flames hit the streamers there was a huge fireball that rushed up the effigy and it was fully alight within 20 seconds and everyone cheered. I felt like a fireman to the rescue but working the wrong way round. The effigy collapsed after 2 minutes as it was just a pair of coveralls with paper stuffed inside and everyone left for bed I presume as they had all disappeared, I made the joke to my engineering colleagues that it had to be a turbine engineer to get a good light off. We spoke for about another 5 minutes and then all went to bed. So that was it, we threw some streamers shook hands and hugged and then burnt an effigy. Great wasn’t it, I can think of better things to do for next year, we’ll see.