Just when I thought…

Just when I thought I had reached a “Gangnam Style”-free place, it was playing on the radio in the bus on the way home this evening.  It was a nice change from the usual syncopated local music.  Fortunately, nobody in the bus started dancing!

There are four different restaurants to eat at camp: Western, Chinese, Indian, Korean.  Apparently, Korean has the best food and was too popular that they had to restrict access to Koreans.  I can only access the Western, Chinese, and Indian restaurants (Chinese and Indian later, after peak hour).  한국 음식 먹어 싶어요!

Lunch: Rice, cauliflower, deer!

There are pigs and deers on site!  Sometimes you can see them on the way to work (between camp and the site!).  I hope lunch isn’t the same deer and pig!

There are two dogs at the site.  They spend their time lying around most of the day.  This evening, I saw them scavenging the bin and eating baguette.

My office is located right next to the site, this lets me conveniently access the site.  I work in the building on the left, and the site in the background.

It’s beautiful here, even the carpark looks nice (with the hills in the background).

This is the bus stop for us at the camp.  The buses either take us to the site (Alliance), main gate (Juat), port, or a few other places.

The buses are frequent enough in the morning to get to work, and lunch time, and home-time, unless you finish late, then there might be a lot of waiting.

I took this after getting off the bus, waiting to cross the road to go to my room.

This is the walk to my room, past many container doors, sunset and site in the background.

Here’s a zoomed in view of the sunset and site from near my room.

As usual, it was another busy day.  After lots of running around, I’m relieved that the work permit I was working on was finally approved.  Just need to focus on the P&ID conformity checks now.  It’s a public holiday here tomorrow (All Saints Day), but we’ll keep working.

I still like it here, and think that it’s a nice place.  I hope I can keep a positive attitude.

I had pork, carrots, and rice for dinner.  The pork was more like ham, with a mustard sauce.  The place was decorated for Halloween tonight –  orange and black streamers, pumpkins, and even a hanging head!

Eating chocolate in my room now.  Coles had Dark Lindt on special before I left Perth, so I brought three with me!

 

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Training Tuesday

I had two training courses today, followed by French class at night, and work in between.  It was busy, non-stop.  Like every day, it went so quick!

After work, rushed back, had a shower, had dinner, then went to French class, and now I’m back and need to sleep.

Here’s some of my notes from French class today.

Lunch: Fish, beans, rice

Dinner: Beef, broccoli, eggplant, rice.

The containers we live in, and the site in the background.

Need to go to sleep! GOODNIGHT

I’ve been here for a week now!

I’ve been here for a week now.

Only one week.

Time goes quickly every day, yet feels so long.

Still a lot to learn and improve.

I’m getting there, slowly.

For breakfast, I had fried egg and rice with soy sauce.  I think I’ll have this more often as it feels like home, since I can’t get soy milk for my cereal!

Lots of stair climbing again this morning, going up and down, following a P&ID.  Good thing I was with the ‘dream team’.

Then I had lunch.  Spinach, sausage, rice and and bread.  I like the bread here.

I had JSA training today.  It finished in 2.5 hours instead of 4 hours.  Maybe because I was the only student, and it was more like revision, since we always write JSAs.

Tomorrow is another full day of training – Permis de travail utilisateur et demandeur.  I think it’ll be very useful because I’ve already been trying to submit a work permit, so it’ll be good to have the proper training for it!

I better get ready for dinner.

Snorkel Sunday

What an exciting day!

Sunday, my day off.  I slept in and it was very beautiful outside.

I had breakfast.

Then met up with Ray at 7:30 and went on a road trip to the North of the Island.

We stopped by at a coffee place, which was nice.  They even had their own coffee plants next to the building.

Then headed North!  The road was rough but the scenery was beautiful.

And finally, we arrived at Poum.

We put our things down at our table at the restaurant, then went to the beach at the back of the restaurant.

There was a dog there, who seemed to spend his whole day fishing.

Such a relaxed dog!  His name was Brian.

I went snorkelling for the first time.  Took a few minutes to get used to, but once I got used to it, I loved it!  I also attached the Sony Actioncamera to my goggles to record some videos which I’ll put here later.

After snorkelling, went inside to have lunch.  Lobster and crab!

Brian then lead us for a walk, to show us some cool places.  He would lead and we would follow, but he would go quickly, turn around and wait for us to catch up before going further.

He brought us out to the tip and then swam out, but too far for us.

The rocks were very sharp and some slippery, especially the ones under water.  Good thing I had my aqua-shoes on!  But even with them, I could feel the sharp rocks!

We called Brian to come back because it was too far out to follow, so he lead us back.

We saw holes on the beach and wondered what they were, we asked Brian and he started digging it up for us, and revealed a crab!

On the way back home, we stopped by the supermarket at Koumac.  I bought a cup to boil my water in, detergent and sponge to clean my cup, and some noodles.

Here’s some panoramas from my phone.

and some Googlemap screenshots to show where I was:

What an awesome day it was! I’ll try to put the videos on next time, so watch here!

Time to sleep, then back to work tomorrow!

Icecream!

Long busy day today. 

I’ve been sleeping later, getting up later, and sleeping less.  On my way to breakfast this morning, the sun was already out and shining.

On Saturdays, we have a treat at lunch and dinner… ICECREAM!

Lunch

Had to go onto the site for P&ID conformity checks this afternoon.  I’m not keen on heights, and it’s really high up there (lots of stairs).

After dinner, watched some poker at the dry bar.

Tomorrow is Sunday, my day off! Going to the North of the Island!

It’s FRIDAY!

It’s FRIDAY! But not really… since we work Saturdays here!

It was a long and busy day, so busy that 12 hours went so quickly!

The scenery around here is beautiful, even in the morning, walking to breakfast, seeing the hills in the distance lit by sunshine, was beautiful (in contrast to the multi-coloured air-conditioned containers).

I was involved as a spotter during commissioning of a system today. The plant is huge (vertically)!  I took a photograph while waiting.  Finally, I’m standing on the famous structure which we’ve seen presentations about!

I’m still learning, but slowly.  Hopefully I can improve more!

Of course… here’s my lunch, dinner and desserrt!

Lunch: Pasta, fish, broccoli.

Dinner: Duck, beans, potatos and rice

Dessert: Watermelon, and, something sweet.

Goodnight

I’m so full

IT helped get the laptop connected to the network printer today, so I can print stuff!  The printer is old and jams a lot!

This is what I had for lunch, it’s a tuna steak, rice and broccoli.

After lunch, I had training.  The trainer basically just read out all the slides.  Half an hour in, I look at my watch, expecting to see that an hour had past… then 10 minutes later, I thought it was another 40 minutes.  During breaktime, was speaking to a lady from China.  We conversed in Chinese until my limit, and then she tried to speak English.  When she couldn’t explain in English, she would use Chinese and I’d sort of get the idea.  I need to improve my Chinese here (and French as well!).

I took this photo during break time.  It shows the conveyor going up to the massif.

This is on the way back to the office.  These busses are dominantly filled with transporting the Chinese and Philippinos to work.

On the way back after work, the bus only paused at our stop and didn’t give us time to get out.  Then my colleague asked the other passengers where the bus was going, and they said “main gate”.  Then a few people shouted and then we had a chance to get out!

After having a shower, I went to have dinner.  Massive dinner!  Rice, broccoli, hamburger, cheese, bun, so full! I ate it all, plus dessert and chocolate drink as well!  Then sat down and talked.

It’s 9pm, I better go to sleep now.  It’s Friday tomorrow, but it won’t feel like Friday because I’m working on Saturday!

PPE-day

Picked up my PPE this morning.  Got XL shirts and was told that they’ll shrink – let’s hope so!

When I left Perth, I packed my new boots (which I’ve only worn once – the day QANTAS sent my luggage to Paraburdoo instead of Port Hedland).  They were too tight and my feet weren’t happy.  Blisters.  Relieved when I was given a pair of larger sized boots today!

We live in shipping containers, these are the doors all propped open, with the site in the background.

Since I’m not constantly snacking throughout the day, I got really hungry at lunch time.

If you don’t tell the serving-ladies to stop, they just keep loading your plate.  I didn’t pay attention while they were loading, and ended up with a big lunch.  Rice, pumkin, beans, pork and bread.

The scenery around here is really beautiful.  Surrounded by hills and water.  The water in the distance looks so clear and is a bright blue – I’ll try to take a photo of this next time.  This is the view about 15 metres from my room.

For dinner, I selected the pork, local vegetables (sweet potato), rice and bread.  Then I had dessert .

I heard that there’s taichi sessions on Thursday, so I might join in.

Here’s people playing volleyball.  Ray’s having a break, sitting on the sidelines in red.

Induction Day

Inductions started at 8am, so got to sleep in.  Couldn’t find my breakfast coupon, so ate a muesli bar instead.

Had HSE induction, asbestos induction, and then lunch.  The fish was a bit slimy so didn’t finish it.

After lunch, I had massif, and port induction.  The port induction slideshow was in French because it was more updated than the English one.  I enjoyed the French slideshow though, it was like a French lesson!

Took the shuttle bus to the office, and attended a meeting.  Now I know where I’ll sit.

Was going to go to French class after dinner, but on the way to dinner, bumped into Ray and ended up going out for dinner with the group!  Had a special burger and grande fries.

I’ll try not to miss French class next week!

Here I am

Sunday 21st October 2012, 10PM: Eating Jaffas and Monte Carlos at Qantas Perth Domestic Lounge while waiting to board my flight to Sydney (PER-SYD).

Monday 22nd October 2012, 5:50AM: Approaching Sydney.

Monday 22nd October 2012, 6:10AM: Arrive in Sydney.

Monday 22nd October 2012, 6:16AM: Rush to international transfer.

Monday 22nd October 2012, 7AM: Have a shower

Monday 22nd October 2012, 7:30AM: Have breakfast at Qantas Business International Lounge.

Monday 22nd October 2012, 8AM: Sydney Airport Terminal 1 Gate 27, waiting to board flight SYD – NOU.

Monday 22nd October 2012, 12:40PM: Collected baggage and waiting outside Tontouta Aeroport.

Monday 22nd October 2012, 1PM – 4PM: Amazingly fast bus ride!

Monday 22nd October 2012, 9PM: Finished dinner (rice, fish, spinach), unpacked, in my room.

Inductions tomorrow.