Chaos reigns supreme, but at least I am going to Russia

I got home 10 days ago to find my home moved and my possessions in boxes and a million things needed doing before the house could be made liveable. I was still feeling crappy after my virus and didn’t feel up to doing much but I have been drilling and hanging things all over the house and spending money like it was about to become redundant, but the house I can tell you is just fan-bloody-tastic. Loads of room and as it is well lower down the central valley it is much warmer and a lovely atmosphere, we have electric gate with intercom, a first for me, and it is making me feel much better, but the best of all I am booked to fly to Florence in Italy next Monday and then after a week of chatting and drinking small strong coffees , probably eating some nice cheese and drinking some expensive wine then I fly to Russia for my summer vacation, this is something I am looking forward to as I can try my new camera, eat some potatoes and drink a little vodka I hope, having a little fun where Peru was funless this last few months. I will update from Florence with pics. Life is beginning anew and I could be happy again, as long as I having to stop drilling the walls in the new house

Nazal Hair Priorities

What is it with guys and making sure their nasal hair is not looking like a razor wire barricade, it is the most horrendous thing on the planet to see a guy with an inch of bushy hair hanging out of his nose. Most women of course wouldn’t ever possibly be seen dead with such a horror on their faces but guys just want to look like a wild animal, it is only 1 step behind having a completely un-cropped beard about 1 foot long. Now don’t get me wrong an old man with a white beard looks almost acceptable, but a guy below 65 years old with a full beard, is just wanting to be left alone. I remember once when my brother had this horrible long hair growing out his upper cheek, not far below his eye, I grabbed hold of him and held him rigid and plucked the offending hair from him, to his complaints of course but I had to do it and hair out the nose is another of my pet hates, along with full beards and giant Mexican moustaches. Why are women lovely and smooth and men all ugly and hairy, I suppose that make me heterosexual then.

Buddha Was Right There Waiting for Me to Get Overexcited

At least I am not dead on the top of the Andes being eaten by the locals, not much of me left after the flu has taken is toll, but it felt just as bad as crashing, I was stood left feeling dazed as all the passengers got off the plane and I didn’t recognise anyone of them, my colleague wasn’t on the plane to relieve me, this was the first flight and sometimes he has caught the second, so I had to abandon my attempt to leave and went back to ring the main office to postpone my taxi, but I was dealt a bigger blow as the women said “didn’t you read his mail that he was flying tomorrow”, all the life and wind just left my body as though I was descending to hell. I could see the look on my wife’s face as she has to move house without me and calling me names for being away for another important event. I couldn’t respond immediately, I was shocked but what could I do, I couldn’t say I was leaving now, the customer wouldn’t allow it as they would have no cover, I am too much of a professional to start screaming and howling, I just had to suck it up an face the fact my wife was going to tear strips of me over the phone. I had even allowed myself to feel a little better at the fact I would be home in 24 hours, but I am feeling crap again and miserable to boot. I am sat in the office dressed for real life and no clothes with me as they are in a bag at the camp airport terminal building. I am depressed and at the point of getting in a boat and sailing down to the Amazon river mouth, I need to get out of the this crappy jungle. A month in the tundra will do me good and a week in Florence on my way to get my visa is even better.

I Am So Excited But I Am So ill I Cant Show It

I am leaving this miserable place in the jungle in less than 24 hours but I can hardly raise a smile, I have a rotten flu bug that is making me feel queasy at the thought of food and my neck aches like someone has been beating me with a bat. Why oh why does it always happen like this, I am going home to my new house and move in and do some furniture shopping and I feel like the walking dead. I am expected to perform my job on-site here as though I am a robot and travel without a problem but I am as useful as a one legged man in an ass kicking competition. I can only site here in my office putting the A/C on when I am having a severe sweating bout, or walking outside in the blazing summer sunshine of 35C to warm up as I have the shivers. I can eat anything other than soup, I am like an old man on camp but without the stink of stale urine lingering behind me. I think I have said it before, if there was a God up there looking down on me, he is just laughing off his ass, the only thing worse he can do is put my flight tomorrow into the top of a mountain in the Andes and make me eat the dead passengers, I think they would taste a bit spicy and would be very tender, they don’t seem to work up a sweat much. I have workmen going crazy in the house back in Costa Rica putting some finishing touches to the house, and making some curtains but nothing is going to be ready for at least another 5 days, I have to live in my new bedroom without curtains for at least 5 days and that could be quite funny. This condo has pretty close housing facing each other and the neighbours could get an eyeful of me when I get out of the bathroom and into the dressing room, but who cares I am used to living like a peasant in this craphole with a golden rain freak who like to display his inaccuracies about the toilet seat and bathroom floor, sharing my bathroom. I am looking forward to getting some normal food, not even decent food, just normal, not steamed goddam chicken that tastes like fresh air, everything tastes the same, I need vegetables and roast things and some bacon and eggs, normal stuff. I am hating working in third world places and having to adapt to it, at least in Russia I am going to be working for Exxonmobil and they may e serving bacon and rib eye steaks, I may be flying through Los Angeles and may get to go shopping in Walmart and that will be my reward for being a good little peasant for the last 12 months in the jungles of Peru, and Buddha did see me save all those little bats and rescue thousands of butterflies, he will look after me wont he. ( Like hell he will )

Killing Time and Making the Most of My Book Creating

I am making the most of my time while I am here, I am downloading pictures of birds for my book while I have the LAN, and making the pages as fast as I can, I have been trying to relax while I am here this time as it can ruin my sleep routine if I let the job get to me, not that it does too much but a little stress can just make me sleep so goddam light, the other night someone had the radio on oin the next room until midnight and I was getting irritated enough to start banging on the wall and the radio stayed on so I then got up and started banging on his door really loud and shouting turn off your radio, nothing, it wasn’t for another 30 minutes when the guy actually went back to his room and turned it off, he wasn’t in so it is a good thing really as I was at the point of ringing his neck. I had to take a sleeping pill to get to sleep after that.
We had to senior managers here from lima to look at the plant and the units tripped while they were here and they started throwing about a phrase they must have heard from a chat show, they wanted “root cause analysis” of the shutdowns, so we make a list form the last 12 months and they we discover that the vast majority is actually the gas plant and not my turbines, funny isn’t it that root cause analysis can make some people look like fools, so they should have kept their mouths shut, I have relayed the information to my project manager and let him have a laugh about it also.
My wife is moving the house alone while I am here in the jungle and she is organising people to do the work that is required for the finishing off house, like some tiling around the laundry area and some small screens for the doors to keep the rain off the nice woodwork. Plus a proper electric instant hot water heater, they installed a giant hot water tank that would cost the earth to heat up just in case we needed it, so we are getting an instant heater in to use with the showers, hot water is only needed for showering and nothing else really the cold water in Costa Rica is actually tepid so you can do everything with that, washing the pots and washing your face, very nice actually. The only problem I have is that the condo has a security charge and that is $150 a month at the moment and I am going to have to put a stop to that and fire the guards as they do nothing. 24 hour security is OK as long as it is needed, the condo is inside a gated secure community anyway so that is over the top. Screw that I am not going to pay to have someone open the gate for me, I can do that myself and save $150 a month.

I am escaping Finally

I have been feeling pretty miserable here as the weather was crap and cloudy and the machines I am working on are crap as they are always falling over so as to speak and life is such a drudge here, crappy food and terrible accommodation. It has been a challenge to keep going without having a breakdown especially with no beer.
So out of the blue I got a mail from my manager giving me the “get out of jail free card”, I was jumping for joy as I am now heading for Sakhalin Island in Russia for the summer. I am only going to relieve someone who has family problems, I am not sure that means someone is dying or his wife has left him and the kids for an Albanian drug lord. But at least it means I am getting out of the jungle 1 trip shorter than I had thought of. The bonus of this is I get to visit a part of the very remote world and take some photos and all at the company’s expense. This is just far better than I had expected as I was desperate not to go in winter as it is a bleak desperate place and only a potato and vodka to keep you company on the long cold winter nights. Plus the idea of doing any work in the cold weather seems impossible, touching cold metal to do some repairs is not fun but at -25C it is a nightmare, so the summer in the volcano capitol of Russia and some possible photo opportunities. The bonus is I get to have a week in Florence doing some training and getting my visa, oh life can be good sometimes but I still have a week of struggling here with all the crap this place can give me including eating goddam chicken three times a day, I will be sprouting feathers and crowing like a cockerel before I leave.

Dragging me away from My CD Bird Book Creation

Well life has taken on a new meaning since I had the idea of creating a CD reference book of the birds of Costa Rica. I cannot wait to keep slaving away downloading all those copyright protected photos from the net and adding all those pages, the only problem is that I am finding so many really high quality pictures that I am going to run out of space for a CD and it is looking like it is going to be a DVD, not that it matters. But it is also taking a heavy drain on my time and I have started complaining to the operators and engineers if they interrupt my downloading. I think someone may notice that I am never to be seen. There again they don’t care as long as the turbines keep whining.
There has been a definite change in the weather, sorry to talk about the weather but not a lot happens here in this jungle, it has been dry but mostly overcast and just miserable, I had almost forgotten that I am a sun worshipper and if I don’t see the sun it makes me melancholy. This is one of the strange parts of being in the jungle it is nothing like you expect, today it is grey and fresh, not cool but the wind takes away your body heat, and when I have been walking about the plant, when I can drag myself away from my downloading it is like a summers day in the UK, all fresh and grey and no butterflies and not a lot else either actually, I only like walking about when the sun is burning off my nose, anyone heard of the expression ‘brass monkey weather’, well it comes from the an old english saying cold enough to freeze the balls of a brass monkey and I checked out where it originated from, there was this crazy story about old sailing ships having their canon balls sat on a brass device called a monkey, and some crap about differential shrinking rates due to temperature, it turns out it actually originated in the USA and was used to indicate hot temperatures, hot enough to melt the nose off a brass monkey, as a brass monkey was a symbol of some company, so actually freezing the balls of a brass monkey is a very crude expression and not to be used in polite company. Here endeth the lesson.

Life in The Jungle

I know I have been working here in the jungle far too long as I am getting accustomed to some strange things. When I go collecting the butterflies from the screens, one particular species emits a chemical as a defence mechanism, the only thing is that even though it is stinky pungent I am getting to enjoy the smell. Now this could be worrying, is it the start of something really disturbing happening to me, I was nearly knocked over by the smell of one of the office workers who obviously is a soap dodger so at least that smell I still find repulsive.
I have seen my first Toucans in the jungle here, they were huge but right up a big tree as i was trying to get a picture of them with my telephoto lens,
My Toucan In The Jungle



I am now the owner of a new house in Costa Rica and my wife is now busy dusting and cleaning and discovering the faults with a newly built house. We have to have some tiling done ourselves in the kitchen and laundry area but other than that it is complete and I am going to have to move all the boxes of books and junk of mine when I get back in 2 weeks time. I am really looking forward to it as the house is treble in size and a garage and tool store and is in a warmer part of the central valley, it is quieter and more secure, no wandering salesmen as it is in a gated community, only problem is no garden to speak of as it is in a condo, I am looking at buying the plot behind the house to turn into a large garden, but I am broke and that will have to wait until I sell my existing house and that is going to be a while yet. But at least I can shower in my new large bathroom and not listen to the traffic anymore.

I Have a New Hobby

I have finally found a hobby that is keeping me happy and entertained. I have been looking for a good book that shows photos of the birds of Costa Rica but there isn’t one available, so I have decided to create a CD book of the birds of Costa Rica written in HTML. I have been finding lots of photos on the internet but as we all know they are copyright protected.
Does that really matter, the photographers all say we will provide you with higher resolution pictures but for HTML, smaller pics are better to get more onto a page so I am happy with the free ones. I have been trying to get more functionality but my knowledge of HTML is limited, I can always make changes later. I even found the full taxanomic names of all the birds in Costa Rica on a web site, that saved me about 2 weeks typing, so I am building the pages at the rate of about 15-20 a day but I will get quicker I hope as I get more skilled, the pages have no script only photos and the English name. I was even thinking as Costa Rica has no laws about anything I could even start hawking these around the tourist hotels as a hobby, visit a place and sell them a dozen CD’s at about $20 a go, it will make my holidays cheaper. The other side to this is that all the birds in the region are all the same and the pics would be the same and only the front page header would change, from Costa Rica birds to Nicaraguan birds and Panamanian birds. I could start my little retirement plan, all on pirated pics from the net.

Testing the Job Market

I have been dipping my toe in the waters of job changing, I have been casting around my CV, resume, to all and sundry just to see if anyone would offer me a nice job somewhere, I got two calls only, one was from a competitor of turbine manufacturers and one from a giant construction company, I was offered an interview with the turbine manufacturer and waited one night unitl I went to bed and wrote a letter of complaint to the agency saying I was going to bed, he apologised and arranged another interview, when I rang them this time the guy was eating at a seminar, and arranged another time, this time he said he was busy but tol me the job they had, was service maanger in Indonesia in some remote place looking after 46 old gas turbines on offshore platforms, flying helicopters everyday. This sounded like lots of dirty crappy work, lots of jetlag and a miserable place, no wife and no beer again. I wrote to the agency telling them that I have never dealt with such an amateur company as they couldn’t organise an interview properly and that the job was crap and I wasn’t interested.
The second interview was so different, I was asked where I would like to work and what type of job I wanted and did I want to live with my wife and child and what sort of money I wanted, he was basically offering me a choice, I got the impression that they were very busy and were desperate, that is OK by me as it gives me a foothold in the door and gives me a steady job with the wife with me and even if it is in the middle east, it is warm and maybe I can get a beer and is tax free, also no jetlag. So they are going to call me again this week sometime with details of job places, wasn’t really an interview then was it. Sometimes life is nice and sometimes it stabs you in the back, we will see how this one turns out later.
I could be a winner this time next week

International Labour Day

Why oh why do i want to celebrate a communist holiday that Lenin or Stalin or Marx thought up and in a country where all the people are so downtrodden and exploited, seems a little bit silly to me. There was an event put on for the International workers, a band playing some mountain music, probably singing about squealing pigs and beautiful mountain Llamas, and then it was make up Karaoke time, where anyone could get up and sing with the band and one guy was actually very good, and another was wailing like he was calling the beautiful Llamas to share his bed, and then someone got up to tell a few jokes about the mountain men and Llamas, it was all pretty lame but after being here for 2 weeks it seemed almost normal. Then we had some mountain style dancers from Lima, which was just jigging about from side to side and dragging people randomly from the crowd to dance about from side to side. I was singled out for the random jigging about from side to side as i was probably the only white man there. The best part of the event was the fact we were in a new building that had some powerful lights and this attracted many flying bugs to swirl around the lights and over the top of everyone a nightjar came wheeling in really fast scattering all the timid mountain men everywhere, it was in and out in 3 seconds leaving a trail of devastation behind it.

My Time Consuming Challenge

Anyone who has worked as a field engineer knows that killing the spare time in a worthwhile manner is key to enjoying rather than hating the time away from home. Another blogger Saddle Tramp was mentioning the fact that she reads a lot while on the road, well I like to read but on the net, many hundreds of pages do I consume, checking details of information and lots of science based stuff and many environmental news items. I also try and check out the birds and butterflies I see here, I managed to get hold of a CD with all the birds of the neo tropical region here and it has photos of the birds, I naively assumed it would have all the pics and have good pics, but they are rubbish amateur stuff and only about half of the species has pics. This gave me a challenge. I have to get a copy of a picture of a bird species and a good picture and then I may create a web page with all the pics I get from the web and use it as an identifying birding page. Only problem is that all the pics I steal are copyright protected and I could be up for copyright infringement, so I am not sure about the use of others pics on web sites that are not for profit. But at least I am finding some great web sites with lots of great pictures that I can check out and steal. It looks from all the sites that a great birding place in Brazil is the Pantanal, it is teeming with so many species it could be a place for my future holidays of adventure.
Some Birders Missing the Bird