Costa Rica in the playground

I had to tell you this tiny one, I took the little girl to the playground, which happens to be at the side of a huge valley, chasm almost, anyhow it is pretty wild and rugged, very steep and lots of trees and this is the tropics, i was playing on the swings and slides and watching the few birds hawking around after the flying insects, as i was wandering around the edge of the field, i was shocked to find myself only 6 feet from a python, not a tiny thing but a huge thing that was as thick as my thigh, it was trying to pretend i didnt exist and not move, i was fascinated by its fantastic colour, it was nicely marked but the sun was shining a beautiful purple off its skin, i was amazed and shocked also, to find this huge 2 meter long snake in the childrens playground was a shock, but something so beautiful also, i got the little girl to come and have a look and she wasnt scared which i thought was good, we stood for 5 minutes looking at it and it began to get a little upset asits last 6 inches of its tail was twitching side to side like a rattle sanke with no rattle, trying to distract us from its rather large head. i left it alone and never told anyone, they would chop it to pieces if i mentioned it to the condo management, for me live and let mive, it did me no harm and i hope it grows big enought to frighten away the guards. Viva Costa Rica

Back from the End of the World For Surgery

Well the last 5 days of my Russian trip were very sunny and pleasant but that will all end sometime soon. I organised my return out of Russia to spend a short break at home with my poor wife as she is getting desperate to have me at home at all after the last 7 weeks of me travelling around the world without any date of return. I had a reasonable 14 hour train ride back to the provincial capital of Yuzhno and spoke to my manager there and he seems to be happy with my performance so that was good. I had a few hours in the hotel Strawberry Hills, the one that gave me bad food poisoning with the nasty shrimp. I got to the airport to find I was two hours early, I was desperate to get away. I had to book the flight myself as this island is just so far from anywhere the time zones are a killer for contacting the office. I got my flight to Korea and the airport there is really fantastic, well laid out and well designed, I got into the business lounge and got internet access, all on Korean computers of course. Got myself some noodles, really hot and spicy ones, fantastic junk food as the camp had nothing like it. A few beers and two hours later I was winging my way to the good ole US of A, on an 11 hour journey, I popped my sleeping pill and got a good 6 hours rest, the rest of the time was concerned with eating food and drinking wine, normal flying stuff. When I landed in Los Angeles I was severely disappointed as I had expected a really new airport but found a really old one, with an antiquated layout and bad signposting and nothing in the way of convenience, it is a 60’s design and it really shows, time for them to spend $15 billion I think. Well the only problem I had there was that all the afternoon connection to Costa Rica were full and I had to wait 11 hours to catch the midnight express, man that was a painful and tiresome waiting experience, I couldn’t even go through into the lounges as I couldn’t check in, nobody available, bad really bad, next time I will make sure I have a better connection. I am still making small changes to my bird book and did use the time wisely, I am getting very close to the point of it being totally finished.
So I land in CR next morning at 9 and I am met by my beautiful wife and it is wonderful to be home in the sunny tropical paradise of Costa Rica. I have a few things that I am desperate to do here, I need to get this cyst removed from my thumb, and I don’t want it to grow huge and then try to get it removed, I had been asking Jenny to find somewhere to get it done but not prohibitively expensive, I was even suggesting having it done at one of the many plastic surgery clinics that are springing up all over the place. But during a short conversation with her niece who is a nurse, she said she would ring her mother who is a nursing administrator in a local small town at the hospital. She rang back and told us we would get it done for nothing by going to her mother’s hospital. This was a perfect solution, I could do some bird photography and have a small holiday in the country, see all the relatives and have my thumb mutilated all for fun. It didn’t quite work out like that but was pretty entertaining. My wife’s sister is the nursing administrator and she has a new house that I hadn’t seen yet, it was on a large plot of 3 hectares and I was expecting a monster place, when we got there, the house was so small, that some of their old furniture was left outside on the patio, including bookshelves and sofas and loads of things, the house was nice but laid out so badly it had no room inside. it only has two bedrooms, it was a planning disaster, she spent so much money and got a pokey hole for her money, she also had 3 apartments built for rent to tourists, these are shockingly poor in quality and tiny also, this is where we slept, the problem was that they used gyprock walling with no insulation and it was roasting by night time and for me that was a nightmare, being jetlagged and a poor sleeper, I tried to sleep and got a couple of hours but then her chickens started crowing from midnight onwards, chickens from the whole neighbourhood were challenging each other all night, my god I wanted a gun so badly to kill them all. Hour after hour , cars driving passed at full speed and with our windows open the noise was shocking, I felt like crap. The next two nights I took a full valium tablet and slept like a baby. Life was nice though during the day and I spent time checking out the amazing birds in the garden,








then we went walking into town and Oh Buddha what a dump it is. It just happens to be in the flood plain of the giant River Sierrpe, and the town was badly flooded a few years ago and there are abandoned houses all over and houses falling down and the hospital is also in town, it was a miserable place, great birds though all over even a kingfisher in the tiny creek in town centre, but the town was crappy. It was getting dark on the way back home and the fields coming back were full of fireflies, thousands of them it was something that you only see in the wilder parts of the planet these days, it was a dancing carpet of glowing insects, a wonderful sight. The next day we went to an appointment with a doctor who said he would do all my surgery for $40, we went to his office and he looked at my finger, which had been looked at by 3 other doctors previously and said, yes it needs removing, that will be $40 for the appointment and $250 for the surgery, I was shocked, my wife nearly fell through the floor, we stood up and left with hardly saying a word. Jenny’s sister was so embarrassed and also very shocked that she had arranged this for us and we had driven for 5 hours to get there and to have this robber of a doctor tell us he was going to steal $300 from us. She said she will sort something out, the next day we went to another doctor who was complaining he was far too busy and said he could do it in a week’s time, which was not possible for me as I will be on my way to Russia before then. There was lots of hand wringing and questioning and he finally agreed to mutilate me on the Monday morning, we arrived that time to find him in a state of panic as he had lost his wallet and was frantically searching everywhere for it, he left the hospital to look at home for it and we had to wait, for another 3 hours, we went to the local café and had lots of different fresh fruit drinks, typical for a hot weather town like this, he came back and then finally I was called into his office and was sat down, my brother-in-law is also a nursing administrator and surgical assistant and he was doing the instruments for my surgery, without doubt the most painful part was the administering the anaesthetic, ironic that isn’t it. He stuck that needle in my cysts maybe 10 times and it was excruciating agony, it made every muscle of my urinary tract contract like it had never contracted before. Anyhow, I was thinking of watching the cutting but I thought better of it, as you kow there is very little skin spare on the thumb and when he had cut out that cyst it meant he was going to pull very hard to get the skin to close the wound and I am left with a thumb I cannot move for the pain and but I will have to remove the stitches myself this week maybe Friday as I cannot travel with stitches as I will not be able to carry anything of do anything with that hand. We drove home from the town, having seen some nice birds and lots of fireflies and a poor town but with my thumb lacerated and painful, good deal or what.

Global Warming and Sakhalin

Well the weather here has turned for the better and today was far too warm for warm weather clothing and maybe even reached 75F, this is nice as I love the warm weather and I am decidedly not looking forward to anything like frost or snow. Anyhow life is looking up as I am getting out for some rest at home for about 12 days and then coming back for a month, this may seem strange flying all the way around the world just to pump up my Airmiles but I am in need of some relaxation in my own bed and some time with my beautiful wife in the tropical sunshine of Buddha’s own back garden of Costa Rica. The fact I have got a short visa means I am having to squeeze in my last rotation here with only those few days at home, but on the other hand it means I finish this year in November and I will refuse to work until after Christmas. The couple of pics I am posting shows this place is a sandy wasteland and is designed for bears and wolves only. No-one in their right mind would actually want to live here just circumstances force people to stay, all the younger generation are leaving for the bright lights of Moscow and probably Dubai. Come one what would you prefer, 8 months of freezing your ass off in Sakhalin or eating mangos and drinking beer on the beach in Thailand. Yes exactly, we all like the sunshine and warm weather, if we all had wings we would be migrating with the rest of the feathered variety.




this is what they call a slug catcher, now i am not joking honestly, no we do pump oil and it sometimes is a slug. go and google it if you dont belive me




This is the turbine i am looking after, a crazy duel fuel Dry low NOX horribly complicated system. like something out of mad max. they will regret buying this thing very shortly i think

Another Day in the Tundra

Yesterday started of cold and windy, but as the day wore on it became miserable, the wind was hard and as the ground is just sand and nothing but soft wand it was ripping up the sand and using it like a tactical weapon. it was getting everywhere as it was dry and filling my ears and eyes and nose and getting all over my hair and face , I looked like a desert arab. the worse thing was that I was chasing around from one office to another and even accompanied a guy outside so he could smoke while we had a coffee and it was a stupid mistake as it filled my cup with sand and I was spitting grit and crunching grains afterwards for an hour, total misery. The average length of stay for contractors is about 1 day. Most arrive and find the crappy accommodation unliveable, all the regular guys have to stay in a room of four beds with a bathroom and toilet shared with maybe 25-50 other people. if you need to pee in the night you have to get dressed go into the long corridor and then to the bathroom, if you don't get up at 5.00 am then you cannot get a shower in the morning, or even to go to the toilet, this is intolerable and most Europeans cannot and rightly so will not tolerate such primitive conditions, I am lucky as the contract I am here on specifies that I am living in the management block, with your own bathroom and toilet, and eating without queuing, this is basic minimum you would expect if you travel to the end of the world and have to be in a place with no beer and no entertainment and no life, plus the money is the same.
Today the weather is sunny and cold not windy thank Buddha but my rotations are all screwed up. My visa is for 72 days total and as I am supposed to rotate out of here for a break and then come back for as month then all is to ratshit. I may have to fly home this week and then back in two weeks and then spend an entire month here. This is going to play havoc with my jetlag and plus I am not going to complete my 1500 hours on my contract and I may have to come back for a 3rd rotation, this is something I am not going to accept. I accepted only 2 rotations and I will not work here 1 month more as I would have to come back here around 26th of December, in the middle of ultra-cold winter. I cannot do this, I would rather quit and go and pick coffee in my adopted country of Costa Rica. Other than this some poor soul fell off a ladder and broke his leg, this site has now last its lost time accidents record of 3 million worked hours and no lost time accidents, some one is going to lose his bonus and he will not be happy.

Life In The Tundra

The first two days were actually very nice weather wise, sunny and warm but then the weather turned like a winters day, grey skies and cold winds and feeling very wintery. My responsibilities here are not very well defined, I have met and been greeted by two separate teams of engineers, both commissioning and operations and both are wanting me to join them full time, it feels nice to be wanted but this is not really what I was wanting or expecting. I am trying to pass over my knowledge and try and learn something from everyone else. If feels very strange that I am giving advice to guys who have been doing this for 30 years, it seems that large oil companies keep everything so pigeon holed that they never get a full all round picture of the project as a whole. I am enjoying it while it lasts but I can feel a nasty winter coming on and I fear that I am going to get stuck in this project and never see a warm jobsite ever again. I was told about a company that is based in Monte Carlo and has fancy production ships all around the world, they do pay great but not sure if I can get the sort of work I do and not have to fly constantly, but life is about trying different things and taking risks, or I may go and take 6 months off next year and fart about with my Spanish house. Not sure which sounds the best.

To The End of The World

One day later, went into the Exxon office, it was very nice and the level of spoken English was amazing, all the young staff spoke English with so much confidence. Again organised chaos, they assumed I had been issued a pass to travel over the country, it turns out that there is two other David Lowes’ in Exxon and 1 had been here to Sakhalin, so I didn’t have a pass, so I spent three days in the capitol Yuzhno. Had a good look around the city and found it just packed with more cars than people and a buzz that all oil centres around the world have got, the only thing I found miserable was the horrible housing that all the locals have to live in, as you can imagine they are all ex-communist apartment blocks that are all falling down. I also found lots of alcoholics falling about the streets at 11.00am in the morning.

I went for a walk to get some lovely fresh air and it is a nice fresh clean type of air only the arctic has,

I found the local town hall with ornamental military mortars and a children’s play ground that amazingly was full of tanks and military aircraft as playground toys.










local church, very pretty inside also



Church Toilet, oh man it was stinky nearby




It is OK in summer but winter could be really miserable. I got the train up and the journey was incredible, clunking away for 14 hours, didn’t see much over night but the daylight brought a pretty barren landscape of a flat empty place with a scattering of small trees, the soil was sand and I have been told that Sakhalin is just a barren sandy island that housed lots of prisoners up to 20 years ago and was basically a military base, until they found oil and gas that is.






I am still suffering from leftover jetlag and the job is running as planned no real surprises so will update with some pics and other news when something happens.

Around the World in 80 Hours

Journey start 2nd Sept Malabo, Equatorial Guinea 5.00am, crappy sleep, flight 7.15am
Arrive Paris much later 2.30pm, flight to Florence 3.30pm
Worry about bags making the short duration trip
Arrive Florence 6.00pm bags made it, was truly relieved

Pick up passport and air-tickets at hotel crappy sleep, awake at 1.30am

Leave hotel 5.00am Florence 3rd Sept flight Paris again, eating too much crappy airline food
Arrive Paris 9.00am flight to Seoul, South Korea length 10 hours, arrive feeling like shite
Arrival local time 6.30am flight to Sakhalin Russia, arrive at 2.30pm local time, feeling like crap after third night with no proper sleep,

Landscape looks just like Wales, lots of pine trees and pretty flat actually near the hotel,

Airport was chaotic to say the least, arrivals hall was minute, and not big enough for the folks off the plane which was only a small Airbus 320, it took probably 20 minutes to get the luggage off the plane, the carousel for the luggage was big enough for about 30 bags and the chute for the bags was actually just 5 feet long and the bags were thrown off a truck that had backed up to a window and then everything went down this chute, so funny as things were plunging down at amazing speed and smashing into the barrier, including boxes of delicate items, it was hilarious, obviously the regular folks started removing bags as soon as the carousel started filling as the baggage handlers couldn’t put anymore on, you would think that with all the money the country is making out of the high oil prices they would have built a really nice new terminal building, this has to be the same as when the old Communist presidents used to visit this place 30 years ago. Tomorrow will give me the chance to see the country and see how rugged this far flung corner of the world really is. I need to take some valium to get over the jetlag.