In which inequality is unfair.

Something that came to a peak of my attention yesterday was the difference between rig workers and third party hands. This is worth a blog in itself... because I'm somewhat angry and I want it to be stand alone so that you can judge for yourself ;)

I'll admit foremost that my role on this rig is not the toughest and that I spend a great deal of the time being flown back to Perth, much more than other members. There is also the perk of an air conditioned unit to come to, to sit down and soak up some internet when there is no work to be done. The one thing ruffnecks want to do more than anything here is go back and enjoy time in Perth, but they can't have that at a whim because they work a half and half lifestyle of three weeks working here and three weeks in Perth down time. I on the other hand do little work until we're drilling, not to get me wrong those two or three days drilling are like the worst days of your life so its more like you get all your work at once instead of a nice even spread that keeps you on your toes. When we stop drilling, like what will happen tomorrow, is that the other sample catcher and I, as well as both mud loggers and one of the two well site geologists are being sent off on the helicopter back to Perth. So we get to go home to our families for a few days and relax.... maybe. Of course in my shoes, although this isn't related to what other people have to go through, I will be heading back to Perth where my family isn't and from the next day I will be delivering newspapers probably until I head back here... but at least I get a Subway ;P

But that is where the perks end here and the unfairness starts reaching back as if a like a spoilt child. Now I'm not going to go into the opinionated debate over whether deck hands and Transocean hands who didn't go through higher education are different in their mindsets and their lifestyle to the guys monitoring the drilling up in that hide away BH unit but its definitely something to consider. Some interesting things to consider though are;

• There is a smoking station but no one from BH smokes.
• The ruffnecks are all local, from Perth whereas third party can be all over. Places include, Malaysia, India, UK, South Africa, Brazil and Nigeria as well.
• They have a relaxed attitude to work discipline, its like being in school again with the kids that asked when maths would be used in work life :/

Job roles in comparison to work up here in the unit are plain to see... although I do wonder what they do most of the time. The guys manning the cranes aren't doing that all day, only when a basket or container needs to be moved to a support vessel or to another part of the ship. The cranes also move drill stacks from one side of the tower to the other... but as I ask, what do they do when this isn't happening? The drillers are in a similar position to this unit in that they sit in their rooms watching the rig floor, the assistant driller is always as active as the driller as he provides a service of running around in his stead, his job should really be driller assistant. The shaker hands have to monitor the cuttings coming off the shakers, weigh and measure the mud viscosity and also weigh the weight of cuttings coming off at 30 mins intervals... but all this happens when drilling is taking place and when it isn't I have no idea what they do.

But putting aside what they do for the times I don't see them there are some major differences between how each of us are treated. I for one am more like a tool. I get sent here to do one job and get given a room of what have you in order to do that. I get paid a flat rate and when they don't need me I'm flown off without me having any say, the worst part of that is the being called back which is just as short notice. The other guys here though they appear to be treated like they mean something to somebody in charge. Firstly they get paid three or four times as much as I and I'm not even the lowest paid of the BH guys, because I'm not staff. Then they get better rooms. Before I go on I must point out that these guys are part of the union and as such they get this strange glowing treatment to work under and at times it makes me feel like they're very pathetic. Not only are they given two man rooms as a typical case (we're put in four man) but they get paid a bonus if they have to be put in a four man. The treatment was also something along the lines that Transocean will leave two man rooms empty instead of filling them with third party. The rooms are much better too with new seats including swivel chairs at the desk, flat screen TVs and more space in the general floor area.

I am currently in a room I was in before where there was a flat screen TV, and now that I've come back at the room is only third party the TV appears to have been downsized to an older model, the ones that were fashionable for middle classes in the early nineties o_O. I made the joke that they considered a TV of that quality would blow our tiny minds. They also get a bonus if they have to attend a fire drill during their down time. It's also a rule apparently they don't need to work unless the fridge has coca-cola in it which really says it all.

This kind of pampered life while working in a hazardous environment makes me think of many things, but being in that work place with them and not being treated like that makes me just think that they're, not soft but absent minded, that they're not looking at the bigger picture. I mean why should they expect all this in order to work? I'm not the best person to complain considering that I don't work all the time here and I get to go back to Perth regularly but the DD, MWD and data engineer could complain. They work on a 3 week by 3 week time table and they get none of those perks and they're also on a flat day rate. But more than me... they have a locker to their name..... woah!

The ultimate thought on this is their approach to third party. It's not enough to have all these things to rise above third party so I was really cheesed off that they would still have the cheek to mock us and other things. For one thing, as previously said, they took the better TV out of our room. But the worst part was that time I came back to the rig and was told about a fatality on another rig, and then as if to make it better for the people hearing it they added it was a third party hand and the men felt more at ease because of that. It really makes me feel sidelined when working with these people, like in school some what. 

View out the window, the lonely sea.

 

In which Dan begins counting down from seventy seven.

Straight away I knew I was back in AUS, the horns beeping, the engines revving, the bad parking and the dented cars. It all made me feel... confused :S

I'd been sitting on a rig up north for eleven days and then I mostly flew straight to summery Japan with all its humidity and now here I was coming back into a cold wintery Perth... and yet, during the day the temperature reaches to 20 and in the sun you are forced to get back to shorts weather. Not to say it doesn't get cold. Due to the intense heat most of the year and day, the houses in AUS are thin walled and with open spaced rooms. This leaves houses with the same temperature in as outside in the air, the only thing a house does is shelter from the wind. So sitting in a room with digits below 10C and with only a fleece for warmth I was feeling the chill. Plus its so cold that I wear that fleece all the time and it starts to smell a bit. Something else that bugs me is that I always wore shorts, everyday without fail when it was summer and autumn and now I can't wear them at all, it makes me sad.

There are a few things that I need to focus on now though, now that I am back. On the plane to Japan I realised that and came to a conclusion. I decided that I needed to come back home early September. I'm just not single and my thoughts lie with being back home with Lucy. If I was a young go get kind of single bloke who wasn't looking for a long term girlfriend then I would just bash out the AUS like, keep looking for that elusive awesome rock smashing mumbo jumbo but the truth is my adventure lies elsewhere and not alone. So I decided to take that return flight that I booked way back in November which I always thought I would change. I thought that I would change the day I came back in order to get as much out of the year as possible, but now I've decided to take what I've achieved as enough and start living a life back home, oh deer the fun of getting a job in Britain. But a few things I need to do, one of them is do something about my car. It broke over a month ago and since then its just been sitting outside the office where I stay looking like those old bangers in falling apart houses, the kind where you wonder if anyone lives there. Steven phoned a mechanic about the car and he told us that it would be better just to look to get rid of it, but in order to do that I needed to take my things out of it and since I've been back I've been busy: I still haven't been able to fix my bike.

During the week I was back I met up with Matt. Matt, who I met in the first week of Perth travels, from Liverpool had returned to Perth after a massive car journey basically all over the place. If asked whether I'm jealous of his travels I must say that if I was going to do that I wouldn't have tripped acid in the middle of the desert and then walked so far from the car that I couldn't see it any more, just saying. He came back to Perth in order to try and get his job back at a bottle warehouse. He'd just spent the previous three months working in a potato factory while I'd been delivering pamphlets and getting my awesome rock washing job (it's not awesome >.<). Something else about Matt is that his girlfriend and him are getting back together, but that's not really anything but gossip so I'll stop :P

Things had happened since I was last in Perth. Steven had decided he was bored and so had started a paper delivery service for the local free papers and they had also started renting the house next door, as you do. So while I was back, for which was about a week although I had expected it to be longer, I delivered newspapers. The exciting difference between newspapers and pamphlets is that more people are actually interested in papers so appearing with them gives a different reaction. The areas we deliver to are Subiaco Centro, literally that's its name, Daglish, Gwelup and Innaloo. To start with there weren't that many and with Steven rushing around on his scooter we were able to finish in good time. My mind was sitting elsewhere as I saw how long ten and actually eleven weeks is. After a little paper delivery and getting back in sync with AUS life I went back to the rig. When I left before I had seen no drilling in 11 days and at the end they had pulled the BOP due to a fault. This meant that we still had one more section to drill for JZ1-1C which we did over eight days on the rig. After this time which didn't go quickly but it felt quick when I left, we were sent back and travelled via helicopter to Barrow Island, it was the super puma so that's different and they we boarded a propeller aircraft which took us over to Karatha in half an hour and that was especially special. At Karratha we boarded a domestic flight and flew down to Perth, but I think because it was domestic it took a different route and flew wide out inland over the hill country to the back of Perth. This area is full of single houses and farms and a few villages and living there is like living in satellite suburbs which people call 'living in the hills'.

Something interesting I've heard about the east of Perth which I still haven't checked out is that the suburbs there are much more lower middle class, unlike the west of Perth which has those massive houses that scare me when I deliver there.

Something I did in the down time I had in between the completion of the JZ1-1C well and heading back was to grab some pizza. There are two things that I miss while on the rig even though there is free food and what not. 1. Pizza and 2. Chocolate. Sweets are ma ma seeing as fruit juice is probably enough, ice cream and dessert. Due to a lack of payment by a particular pizza place we had been handed some free pizza vouchers and now seemed like a good a time as any to head on over and take advantage. Some interesting things happened on that trip though, we parked on a steep hill in a space that I'm not sure if we were allowed to be in, and also down at the bottom of the hill was Scarborough beach road where on one side there was a Yoga centre and the other there was an internet cafe. I couldn't help but see that it appeared to me to be two different types of people in each, jocks and geeks but I digress.

The room that I'd been staying in for the past two or so weeks was not really mine, it was a temporary hold in between rig being on. As the Pamphlteers have grown bigger and expanded into the house next door and into a whole new business there were going to hire a guy to manage something and he was going to have that room up there. In order to prepare the bare room for this I was asked to get a chair a desk and a bed... without spending money o_o. Ok so its not as scary as some intense task from 'The Apprentice' but its still something far removed from life back home. Here in Perth the city is sprawled about and the houses have large areas of grass before the road. This is sometimes used to park cars or for a pavement or a tree but during collection when the council comes round and collects up all the rubbish people have collected instead of letting them take it to a skip there are many a pile of stuffs outside peoples houses. This stuffs is then up for grabs, seeing as its waste anyway people have a kind of balance with the world in which you can grab it if you fancy it. Seeing as people love to have the latest stuffs the things they leave outside tend to be in perfect working order but older and used.

So as I deliver newspapers I had to be on the hunt for random junk beside the road. During this period the area soon to be collected for was Karrinyup which is none too far away at all from the house. I was sceptical but on going for a purpose mooch for shizzle I did find some things and it got me excited about this aspect of AUS life. I saw a little push pedal go kart I wanted to nab and roll down a high, but over the hill I then saw a nice desk, in fact three desks. Like something out of Goldilocks they sat there being perfect and I took the middle one. Although I couldn't do it alone so I asked Sun to help me, and while we were there he grabbed a chair also and a man rolled a very new looking chair down as well and we got a hold of that too. The desk was so long that it stuck out of the rear of the car and we couldn't close the door. It was my first time driving a car with any kind of odd thing going on in the back. There is a chance that I could drive the car with a trailer on the back, either way I was being careful and there were some odd noises.

In which I go for a ride and have the last days in Japan.

So come Friday Lucy had to return for more lessons and this time for a few hours. So I decided I would take her bike and head out into Saitama. I headed over to the freeway and then took a left and followed it on and on. Underneath the raised freeway is a highway... bit odd. The difference between these roads is that there is no way on to the freeway and the highway has loads of traffic lights. I headed out of the urban concrete jungle and quickly it gave way to its secrets. Around the train station there are lots of small mini supermarkets and other shops for living goods. But as you slip away from these centres of people you come out to the housing areas and there is more space. There are bushes, trees even hedges. There were quickly few people around. I headed on and on following down under the freeway passing more and more odd things, but never leaving the city. Where in Gloucester for example I would have left the city and ended up being surrounded by farmland I kept going on what appeared to be never ending housing roads and vending machines. My main objective for that day was to reach the Arakawa gawa, the Arakawa river but in the end I didn't even get half way there. Instead, I learnt to be daunted by the scale of this monsterous mega city. It really made me question my idea of a city completely. I always felt that a city ended where nature met buildings but here you reach the edge of the prefecture before that happens!

The path started to get hilly and it turns out I'm not designed for that bike and my knees started to ache. I see what Rob and Sam have been having problems with now ¬_¬ I crossed over to the other side of the road and tried to look out across the area by crossing on a bridge, but I didn't see anything spectacular. I took a detour and got a little lost and found a kitteh. The roads here are funny. On the slope that took me back down the slight hill they had put red lines and a rotating red light to warn motorists, put warn them of what considering it wasn't even a hazard? I rejoined the highway and had to stop as a middle school class all on bikes rode past. That was the most out of place I felt the entire time, I had to wait for them all to pass in single file before I headed on... or so I thought. They all pooled on the other side of the road and so instead I had to cycled through them all to carry on. I found the big interchange in the freeway where it meets another. I rounded a corner and saw a police patrol car had pulled someone over, and both officers were peering in through the window.

I passed a few construction yards and decided to call it quits around there. I found an interesting shrine complex but the map was useless and I had to accept that the area was so much bigger than I had thought. I couldn't even see the Arakawa from my perch looking out on the freeway winding on into the distance. I decided to cut my losses and bought a Matcha flavoured iced milk tea thing, I think its basically a green tea flavoured milkshake... which is just awesome and something I'm going to miss the most. I liked to think it was something I could only find in that area of Tokyo but then I saw it near Lucy's apartment so...

I started heading back the way I'd come and tried to soak up as much of the air of being in Japan as I could, it was definitely a place unlike anywhere else I've been. The day wasn't ended here though. I headed back and got Lucy and we headed back to Harujuku. On that busy street we rebraved the sights and sounds and attained the lolita clothing shop. This time I bought her something and it was rather satisfying to have been assertive over it. Then we headed walking on down to Shibuya station which has the famous crossroads that everyone thinks of when they think Tokyo, and no these massive crossroads aren't all over the place. It was weird and made sense that when there was a red man all the cars came rushing past and then when it went green the middle filled with people. We took a video while walking across it to show the amount of people coming and going. Obviously we had to say oh hai to Hachiko. Then we caught the train and rounded on Tokyo Tower. There were a few more foreigners here and we approached the lit red Effiel Tower here in Tokyo. We walked across a small shrine like park and found ourselves in the presence of ninja cat and the towering... tower. There is a little tourist complex at the bottom, not as big as the Sky Tree village but there all the same. It was closing as we were there but we looked around. We tried to get some good night photos but it was hard. On the way back over a slight hill we counted three churches all in the same place and then strolled on past some interesting food places.

On the last day we headed on to Ueno, Lucy wore her new dress ^__^ We attained the park and wandered around the food stands there selling choco bananas and takoyaki. We decided to rent a pedal boat for half an hour and went a pedalling across the boating lake there. I don't think Lucy appreciated it when I pedalled fast but by the end we were both doing it.

After the boat trip we crossed back where we had come and watched some more Koi fish omnom on the water. They are really colourful but they look really silly with their mouths opening and closing in gulps like that. We walked on into the park and it was good to be in a park, a green space away from the buildings. The main path there was very wide and we didn't know where we were headed. I had mentioned to Lucy quite a few times that I had wanted to watch baseball and seeing as Japan has baseball as a national sport I had been excited to watch some, but it wasn't until the last day when we were walking through the park until I got to see some. There were two high school teams facing off on this Saturday in a baseball cage and I couldn't resist sitting down and watching, getting all Cross Game on the spectacle.

The funny thing about the park is that while everywhere else has plenty if not too many vending machines the park has none and so it was a little hard to get a drink and it was getting hot. We passed the zoo and I made a little paper aeroplane out of a flier, we threw it around like a couple of excited kids. Next we walked off towards the actual city like area of Ueno and passed the train station, we headed in on the hunt for food. As we were walking away from the train station we headed down some stairs and over a walkway that was raised above the busy roads below. I took some really interesting photos with some good sights in the background. Then we wandered on over to a department store with many things on each level but restaurants on the top. This is where we headed for pizza, bought the cheapest one but also truly discovered the awesomeness of the service here. When the lady came with the food she also brought the receipt, oh and the water was free and she brought it over without being asked, but having the receipt given straight away meant that when we had finished and the dishes taken away, or maybe before that, we could just get up and pay straight away. Plus they don't believe in tipping here so there was no secret service charge or expectation of extra monies.

After having a quick look around the local area, and it seemed more rough with people keen to get their own way and some interesting shops we decided to head back. When we did leave I remember saying that it feels like we've lost if we go back now and the last day came to a close.

It was sad to leave Lucy and sad to leave Japan. I knew that this was probably the best time I was going to have for the foreseeable future and yet I spent the whole time being envious of future Dan when I no longer have to say goodbye to her. Even though it was only going to be two and a half months til it gets to be that day, which is considerably less time than seven months, I still felt really sad and since then time has been going really slow and I count the days. I know I have a lot of things to do before I can leave but its still painful to be apart.

After a long plane journey I was quite the tired and yet I had to endure a rather intense customs search at the airport, I guess its just very unlikely for a man alone to travel to Japan?

Lucy getting angry at daytime teleV

In which Lucy and I do some Japanesey thingages (and I invent new words it would seem).

So come Tuesday I was feeling settled and comfortable. But on this day Lucy had to go into lessons. I believe I merely laid in bed half asleep, not trying to retain sleeping or stubbornly not waking just strangely unable to wake properly. Lucy went to her lessons and I walked her there. I then went for a wander and a bike ride, on her red bike - Rosy. It was both with hesitation and confidence that I rolled out among the Nipponese. On the one hand I felt out of place and the target of suspicion seeing as if I was asked anything I would fall over, metaphorically, but on the other there was no reason to feel odd at all. It felt like when I first drove a car on my own, like as if everyone secretly knew I was a beginner. I headed round the tight roads and watched other people in case there was some secret cycling code that I was shockingly ignoring. I quickly learnt that this was not the case though. I also found that even in Japan the cyclist are all over the road, something you might more expect in China or the Vietnam and so forth peninsular.

In random boldness, I've been feeling more confident recently, I decided to head into a super market... BY MYSELF!!! argh. I bought an apple, the only fruit I had there?! I'm not sure but I remember Lucy saying that I splashed out for it. The shop was full of old women who were half my height. They also moved for me less than Australians although in AUS they are at eye level and stare at you in the eye where as here I wonder if anyone looked up to see I was a gaijin walking amongst them. On that note I'm sure I scared everyone with my big beard because no one looked at me. In the end the woman at the til rushed me through without evening looking at my face and I was out of there without problem. I returned to the bike park outside and rolled on off. While waiting for Lucy to finish lessons I took a trip over to the other side of her University and under the Freeway, which is raised up to avoid anything from the city getting in the way. It was on this side of the Freeway that I found two stray cats living under a car. It was very cute and I took a video to show Lucy. They were timid of human contact but liked to stare. Lucy called me the cat whisperer because I saw more cats in Japan in ten days than she saw in the whole time she has been there.

Later that day we headed upstairs to the girls in the other flat to arrange a presentation they had been asked to do simply because they were from another country visiting a Japanese University, seemed a bit taxing considering all the other work they had to do.

On Wednesday we headed to Asakusa, Lucy is fed up of visiting Asakusa as she has been there so many times. I revelled mostly in the amount of people there, more than what was actually there. 

The busy Asakusa

 Posing like a Japanese girl

I admired the large shameless Americans who love to stick out as tourist more than anything, is the impression. It gave me the idea that there are three types of Gaijin who are in Japan, those that integrate well like Mr. J-list and get a Japanese wife, those that are loud US style tourists and those that act like hipsters like something out of lost in translation that act like they liked Japan before it was cool, Lucy disputes this and she's probably right. I feel this way when I see people feeling proud that they like sushi more than someone who hasn't had it before... even if they themselves have only had it once before! Moving on. The temples were big, cool and all but Lucy and I had visited a remote one and had got to see it in peace and that for me was a better experience. Not to turn you away from Asakusa, its still pretty and pretty awesome. Moving slightly away from that we found one of Tokyo's weird hidden and tightly packed amusement parks like the one in Jin-Roh or Giant Killing and like those two anime the one we same felt depressing in a strange way with little people actually inside enjoying it. We went for lunch around the train station. I thought it would be good to head to somewhere typical Tokyo ish and that meant a slightly tucked away business lunch. The regular food in Japan, if you be interested, is the kind of thing they have at Lucy's uni cafeteria, things like karokke, katsu chicken and curry, ramen noodles, seafood lots of fried things, a tiny amount of salad, a few pickles and of course... a ton of sticky rice :D in the place we went to I had a curry which you order by paying at a ticket dispensing machine, in order to lower human contact of course, and then handing it to the food counter and they mix it up for you. There was also a free water dispenser there which dispensed ice too, I thought it was amazing. We nommed and headed out quick, which is the idea.

 Typical lovu lovu photo for the memories.

We also wanted to head to the Sky Tree and instead of getting the train one stop we instead decided to walk, and that left us with a good photo opportunity and ever the tourist I am doing something silly in one photo at least. Lucy also showed her confidence and skills and asked a man to take our picture, and its a really nice picture of us together. 

 

Sky Tree hat

On the long walk to the Sky Tree in the heat we stopped for a drink at the vending machine. The thing about these machines apart from them being everywhere is that they are also cheap and the drinks cost about the same across the choice. Some are 100Y for everything some go up to a sky high 130Y. But what this means is that you tend to head for the biggest thing in there which in this case was a half litre can of coke and energy, because we wanted to feel so energetic. On the walk we also crossed at a crossing which played what I think is a famous pop song some where, but I couldn't put my finger on what song.

The Sky Tree..... is big!! Or tall more likely. Its pretty serious on the tall front. I wanted to get a size of how large just one of those beams was that make up the design, so I did :3 Then we entered the little shopping village... I say village... it was a mall, there I said it. There was a big Hello Kitty doll and we weren't supposed to take photos. We got a little lost because I didn't realise how big it was in there and then we found the Shounen Jump shop, which is a magazine that runs manga serializations. Of course half of it was One Piece and the other half almost completely made up of Bleach and Naruto but I found some Bakuman things in there. It made me realise just how big One Piece is here but also how valid Bakuman's story is, which is a story about two boys trying to get a feature in a parody of the Jump magazine itself.

 The size of a single beam on the Sky Tree.

On the Thursday we headed to Laketown which is the name of a shopping mall, a big one too. Little did I know that it is basically three merged together and unlike the shopping malls in Perth which are about a quarter of the size you can get really lost in these. The first thing we did was see some incredibly cute kittehs and puppies in a pet shop and I literally had to pull Lucy away from watching them roll around looking massively cute. On the third floor there were eating places with about no one in them, the staff stared at you as you walked by and you could almost hear them sigh as you decided not to go in. Instead we wheeled round and headed into that 'family restaurant' by the station. A family restaurant is a bit different to anything that we have back home. The closest thing is a harvester or sizzler but those are pub-like whereas here there is no bar, hence the family bit. Its basically a cafe that wanted to be a restaurant. You head in and wait to be seated, then you scan the menu, smash tap the buzzer when you want service and order foods and drinks. When they come they bring the receipt and when you are finished you approach the buzzer again and pay at the little desk thing they have in eating places and head out and the reason why that is not like a restaurant? Well ask how it is different to a cafe/diner. 

  Posing beautifully on a duck.

I posed on a duck, we attained the Ghibli shop and looked around about a third of the place, had a look at the outside which at the moment is a massive surroundings of grass and I did wonder if we were still in Tokyo, considering. After Laketown we headed back to Soka and were determined to discover the Japanese secret art of Pachinko!!!!! Big mistake. We were very intrigued and felt a duty to explore this area of Japan for the adventure sake. But not only did we have no idea what we were doing we also couldn't have been more out of place in there. The guy smiling crazy at me first completely ignored Lucy and turned to the guy, even though I knew barely any Japanese and I couldn't understand him in there regardless due to the noise. Needless to say we blew our money and wandered out of there more confused than anything but richer for the experience. We made so many jokes about it that it was hard to breath as we were laughing so hard on the way back. That's when we got some delicious pork and cheese fried ball things that were awesome. It also makes a good story and I've learned that these things are one of the most important things you can gain from your adventures and make me feel that even though I only stayed in Perth this whole time in AUS I have a lot to say because of what I did here, the stories may not be as varied as they would be from all over AUS but they are still interesting. 

P.S about that last photo, she couldn't duck out of it ^__^ 

 

In which Lucy and Dan go to the Tokyo countryside.

Oh! A camera...

On Monday we headed out on a train. To get around to where we planned to go we had to take some odd train rides. We headed along a line we'd not been on before then when we got off the station there we had to leave the station and walk to another station altogether just to catch the next train. By this point we were already far from the centre of Tokyo and as a result we didn't see any other foreigners for the rest of the day. Now Lucy had been telling me that people stare at her... but I didn't get any of that. I think that is due to the large beard I had grown, the long black hair and the rough look I naturally seem to have, oh and I'm taller than them tee hee. 

 Taiyaki pitstop

Anyway we had to walk down this street and reach the other station, we rolled on for a few more stops and then walked the last bit to the forest. The heat was picking up that day, although it wasn't sunny it was humid and so the heat didn't escape you. We decided to walk from the train station to the forest and that meant that we got to see some lovely more remote scenic parts of built up Japan. The tall buildings were all gone and there was a lot more green and open space, I say open space. I don't mean like Perth I just mean there isn't a building everywhere. There were some very pretty places and I loved that little walk. It was amazing as well to come through to the forest at the end and be surrounded in trees instead of buildings. 

 A more remote area of Tokyo, the suburbs if you will. Oh look a vending machine.

Something that I should have expected but was surprised by the in the end was that there were bugs and things in the forest that I've never seen before. Weird and wonderful things like the long yellow worm with a spade head. I realised too just how far removed this place was from Perth, so lush and green and mud and things. There were some black butterflies flying about. We walked to the end of the forest and found ourselves at the border between Tokyo and Saitama, interesting. When we left the forest for real we walked across a very scenic square of grass and I thought it was really nice and typical of Japan with the bottom of a small hill leading straight to another hill, its hard to explain what I mean.

 Couldn't be further removed from the dustbowl that is Perth.

 

On walking round there we started walking up to... what turned out to be an amusement park, at first it seemed to be some abandoned fun village of sorts, there was no one around and all the ticket booths and things were closed. There was no one on watch either and it just felt like you could walk aimlessly into the place without much care. We decided against this and wondered around the edge of it in search of an elusive lake on the map. I say the map, the truth is we didn't have a map... hmm... so we could have ended up very lost indeed ohoho the fun of the fair ground.

We stopped at what appeared to be the actual entrance and bought a Peach flavoured fruit nectar, I really love fruit nectar :3 and watched four women with children leave the park. Then we head on round the park some more and found the park. Something I noticed on the road as we walked was a guy who had stopped his van in order to eat lunch, but he hadn't found a parking space he'd merely stopped on the kerb and people had to go round him, I got the feeling that he wouldn't be able to do that in Britain, or Perth. We made it to the lake, it was a man made lake with a dam at one end, but the sort that powers anything or lets water through, there appeared to be no stream or river passing down the other side. So we walked along the top of there in the intense sun hughhppth, and then we wondered down towards the grass and the nice park area down there and the shade of those trees -_-

 

We probably didn't spend a long time in that grassy park which is no good, not good to rush. On the way out we noticed a sign that said 'See You Again' we thought it was rather funny. Then we headed out from there across to the train station hidden amongst the houses. It was a station with only one platform side, as this was the end of the line, and another platform at the end of the station for the Seibu metro. We, after getting on the train one stop along and reconsidering; so getting off and waiting for it to come back, boarded the metro and took it round past the rail entrance to Seibu land and on round to the large Seibu owned baseball stadium. The stadium is a large shiny bowl inverted and makes an odd scene on the landscape. The station and the area outside the stadium was deserted and made this place too seem like a ghost town. We headed over the road and up along the road to an even more remote area of the prefecture of Tokyo. We finally got to some places were there was without a single letter of English and it felt very good to finally be there. There was a very old shrine which we couldn't enter and was built on a hillside. All the buildings were lost in the trees. We followed the path along some more and found a different shrine, more public and there was still without anyone there. The tourist board there telling about the place was completely in Japanese too and and it felt like we had come somewhere foreign tourists do not come. 

The empty shrine

 

The shrine was a lovely place to visit and it was definitely something new, plus that Pagoda we found at the back made things more awesome. I still have no idea what they are used for ohoho. But it's big, it's red and yellow and it's there, and it's awesome. Among other things we found up there were these dragon like statues that they had trailing about the area, interesting and I took no photos of them despite the fact that I should have. We also found a patch of bamboo, the key to this is that this was the only place we found bamboo and I'd always wanted to see some growing. I found an odd chalky paste over the outside of the trunk, if you call it that, and of course I decided to draw myself in it. In hindsight I have no idea why :S Also, I reinforced that bamboo is indeed hollow, but also it has sections and at each section there is a disk giving it strength.

We headed down a small amount of steps which may or may not have been graves, well there were graves there anyway and I don't mean graves because in Japan they cremate instead and so there were little tomb stones. There were two people there, the only people, and there was a nice blowing of incense. Then we headed back to the train station...which was deserted except for one train and Lucy didn't want to get on it. Continuing my trait of not even attempting to figure out the Tokyo rail networks there was a reason that I didn't know of for why she didn't want to board it and in the end we did get on it... I was confused too. As we headed back we realised that time had been catching up with us and we might be about to wade into commuter congestion on the Tokyo train lines. We managed to get back before though but we did see a lot more people and school children walking about all over the place. It was still pretty awesome to be swept up in the typical life of the area but we were also pretty tired by this point.

In which Dan attains Japan and gets a hug from a very happy Lucy. :3

So after seven months since I last saw Lucy and nine and a half months since she went to Spain I still didn't know the day I would be seeing her until the day before. I had no idea what the day would be so I couldn't count down and then in the end it was guess work... until... work on the rig drilling was being delayed and then there was a problem with the blow out preventer and so they decided to replace it I think. This is something that would take three weeks and therefore we were being sent off the rig. Even then though it may not have been the next day and there was uncertainty about whether I would be leaving the next day and I thought I wouldn't be, and then suddenly in the morning I found out I would be and excitement crept up on me. I didn't fully get excited until I booked the tickets and then suddenly I was full of emotion I was shaking. I printed off the ticket in case I needed it and headed to the chopper deck for the first part of a 25 hour journey, although the first few hours were sitting around doing nothing and waiting for the chopper. We watched some whales spray about the sea surface. When the helicopter came it was so delayed that we didn't even go through the customs bit at Barrow Island and instead walked straight on to the plane. That meant I couldn't get my book and I had to sit a very boring two hours on the plane. In Perth I got the airport terminal over to the international and did something very typical. I stood in the wrong line, then the wrong line, then the wrong line and then finally in the economy line which had loads of people in. After that I had some time to kill so I phoned Lucy, I'd already emailed ahead to tell her I was coming. I was talking to her before she was about to head to bed so that was strange. I was quite tired but in the end I only got two hours sleep on the total plane rides. Hong Kong was exciting to fly down into and I saw a large Buddah statue a top a mountain.

Touching down in Narita I found it strange to learn that Tokyo airport is actually in Chiba but the train networks are so good there that it doesn't matter too much. I got held up in customs a little as the man wanted to ask what I was doing there, this is a lot more smooth than the return into AUS believe me but I might not go into that, it was rather embarrassing. Then I walked out of customs and felt the surge of excitement. In truth though it didn't feel like a long walk it felt very quick indeed. I walked out of the tunnel and saw Lucy straight away amongst ten people, I just can't miss her even though he head was turned, she was looking up at the screen and I tried to creep up on her, I never change ;) but she saw me and it was a wonderful moment. After not being with her for seven months we felt a little nervous to be together but that quickly fell away. What I remember most was the way she felt when I hugged her, I had forgotten what it felt like and I hope I never have to do that again O_O

Lucy took Alex the cat which is a cat I bought when I was about 16 that I decided I would give to the one I love when I met her. Mr. Cat is a cat that Lucy made and what I hold on to, so seeing them together means a great deal. 

Let me tell you about Japan. I discovered very quickly after that as we headed out of the airport and into the sights and sounds of Chiba that Japan is probably the most removed place I could have been from Perth. Perth is dusty, brown sandy and wide whereas Japan is the opposite of that which its lush trees, green and tightness. We soon descended into the concrete jungle that is Tokyo and I learned that the name concrete jungle really does hold true more than you know. Imagine a place where everything is planned, there is not a single odd space which has been left to itself and then imagine there being no parks either. In Perth there is a park almost round every corner, whether that be a reedy-lake left in the middle of the suburbs or a small housing plot where they've let the grass grow and put in some swings and other toys. Tokyo, which spills over into the other Prefectures like Saitama, is a concrete mess of mansions, what they call fancy high rise flats, and shops. However before you sink into the doom and gloom its not all like that. Main Tokyo is like main London, there are loads of shops and city centres and lots to see with few houses, the suburbs in Tokyo are built up around the train stations, where you'll find more mini marts than you can visit and hustle and bustle, what I later learned though was that once you get away from the train lines it becomes a lot more peaceful and there is more space but more on this later.

Day one in Japan was without rest. I had only grabbed two hours sleep but that appeared to be enough to trick my mind into a new day and even getting into the evening I was still awake. We attained upstairs and wished Lucy's friend Julia a happy birthday, there was cake o_o and some interesting noms, I could write a separate blog just about the noms here and I might ¬_¬ . I made sure that the first foods we had there was a bentou but to the surprise of my anime knowledge they weren't as big a fad as I thought, they didn't get half priced by a god and fought over by a bunch of wolves and dogs... er... maybe that reference is a bit hardcore. What really surprised me was that there was a place that served up a bentou of your choice, which in my opinion is like having a sandwich takeaway, boggles the mind that one... sounds awesome *O_O*.

Day two in Japan was an exciting one. I must admit that after spending seven months apart from Lucy I was trying to make every second count and I was panicked that we weren't doing enough but that's to be expected from a time so long apart, it was especially hard to believe she was right there with me. We headed to Vie de France which is a Pan shop, Pan = Bread, however I don't say bakery because I don't believe many of the breads there make sense in the normal... sense. They have Anpan, which is bread with a sweet filling made from red kidney beans, meron pan which is normal bread dough with cookie dough pulled over the top and criss crossed on the same way you cut to present a melon and it tastes amazing O_O. They also have melon cream filled pan which is bright green. The wonderful thing about Japanese food is that they don't shy away from bright green like we might and its probably because green tea is that colour. On this day I finally got to try Anpan, there is nothing ordinary about it! We headed on to the train, the ticket systems works in the same way as transperth where you buy a card and top that up then beep the button thing, that's not a swear. We headed on some train lines, I made no effort to follow what line we were on because it was the most complicated thing I'd ever seen, and probably because I couldn't read any of the names.

We headed on down to Akihabara which is famous for anime/manga otaku and electronics otaku. The first thing I noticed as we came out were the girls dressed as maids handing out flyers and hellos for you to come to over priced cafés. Just round the corner we entered a game corner, with purely crane games in the ground floor, or UFO catchers. 

 

In the basement was purely smokey gundam gamers who couldn't hit a gun-dam thing! On the other floors there were more arcadey games including Initial D, win, but every one of them had someone playing so I went on a 3D racer instead. I came third because even though I drove well I didn't realise there a a nitro button until it was too late, but why would you expect there to be one ?_? After that we headed to an odd drums game, I say odd because I genuinely thought there was only one button; that big drum, so I messed up at the start.

Smokey Gundam room.

Overly keen to drum.

 

That's when I began realising that everything in Japan was cute or it wouldn't appear to sell. From little faces for expressions to full cute designed characters to represent companies its cute all the way. The one that got me was the Softbank dog which shows you if a café or shop has wifi, and its very cute. We headed to Gamers which is a famous and big shop selling anime, manga, games and stuffs like that. All the books in the shop had wrappings on so that you couldn't read them in the store, which is what everyone does in the convenience stores instead of buying them. We headed to the shops around this area on a hunt for more toys and interesting things. We saw a complete range of the different things people liked to buy and it wasn't so different from a collectors shop back home. There were certain areas though that were a lot more passionate about what they were selling than others though and there was a lot more of it, that's why I felt it was incredibly awesome.

We found a Mr. Doughnut, and bought some drinks... and a doughnut. I couldn't resist buying a doughnut, I'm such a sucker. So after watching Lucy impress me some more with her language skills I settled down to absorb where I was. It was hard to acknowledge where I was and I felt paranoid that I would wake up from a dream. But ignoring that we pressed on. 

 

We headed to Harujuku to look at all the lovely girls clothing. I mean there were some boys things there but I'm not fashionable about myself. If Lucy chose anything out though I would perk up and listen. We found some lolita dresses and other cute clothes, I felt incredibly self conscious going into a girls clothes shop as a Gaijin and as a bloke o_o and I'm tall there. Anyway in this one shop they played mono tone techno disney songs at the same volume as the rig's shaker room (you need double ear protection in there) and the girls in the shop, every 30 seconds would shout 'Grankurasai-masen~' and just hold that note doing various things like dropping it or rising it before silence. They were all dressed in lolita too and amongst other things it was a shop we could have gotten lost in, *ahem*.

 

The thing I learned about Harujuku is that there were a lot of black guys hanging around there, some selling things and some literally loitering on the street. There are very few black guys in Japan so I'm not sure what's going on there. It was the first day so we didn't buy anything. We walked around before heading back to the train station. There was a store on the cross roads, completely detached from anything else and it was called condom land, just gonna slide that in there... make of it what you will. We also found a Ben and Jerry's and realised that weird line of people on the other side of the pavement were queuing to enter, that confused me, surely the queue should just extent out of the door?

This concludes day one of fun times in Japan. As you might imagine it was quite surreal and different. I had a hard time understanding how narrow all the streets were and things and how when you step away from the main shops and streets is both devoid of things but not devoid of people and many other things that are hard to explain. Anyway Lucy and I have put some photos up on faceboke so you can check them out.

In which Dan gets rigged.

So between finishing training and getting my first hitch to the rig was a painful time. I was still at the hostel and they were still busy. So I was told a date I would be leaving and put everything to that, and then when that didn't happen, it got pushed back some more, I needed to book more time and they couldn't handle the late notice. So it looked like I would be ending up sleeping in my car.... however I was saved by the bell. Back at the pamphlet job, which I was still doing, they said I could stay on the coach there and since then I've kind of been doing that. I'm not in the way and I'll deliver for them when I can so its not problem. I feel weird because that job was never supposed to be serious and the pay wasn't a lot, however this reward is much worth the effort.

I went to the rig the following Monday anyway. It was both with excitement and worry that I attained the airport terminal. It was a domestic terminal, but not the domestic one. It was a private firm the Cobham terminal. They take trips for mine companies and you might guess the rest. The planes they use though aren't the same as the others because they don't handle the same volume of people nor do they go to places with large air ports or landing strips. Both of their two types of planes look the same but one is a British aerospace and one I think is an Airbus. I think the difference is that one of them has a pointyer nose.

The flight was interesting. After the Cyprus flight I've seemed to think that on a plane you ignore the seat number on the ticket so I sat anywhere, ended up next to a policeman who gave me one funny look but then that was it, on the flight back I realised, as there were many more people, that I needed to look at the boarding pass. Then the plane flew out from Perth, it was a smaller craft and it acted slightly differently. We flew over the nothingness that is WA. I swear that after leaving Perth I saw not a single town the rest of the journey, just a load of fluvial action :P but this is an untouched natural spectacle and its best viewed from the air. I will say one thing of interest and that is that to the immediate north of Perth there are a lot of farms with their square plots and orange roads and then suddenly this just stops dead and it become dusty.

The plane flew all the way out to the coast and then started down to Barrow Island. Barrow Island is a funny place. Its a class A reserve which means that you're not allowed there and that its critical over the quarantine, yet there are nodding donkeys everywhere. When we took off by helicopter after a short sit in the terminal building, which is the smallest I will ever go into, I could see the island much better. It is covered in dotted termite mounds between 1 and 1.5m in height. They are about 10m apart and they cover the whole island, its kinda mental. There are nodding donkeys all over the island in little brown vegetation less squares and they are all connected by dirt paths/roads. The island is trying to be preserved, while oil is drilled and pumped here and its an odd thing to see. The companies will go to a plot, rip up a square area and drill a hole, place a nodding donkey there and when that runs dry they remove it and let the grass grow back and the road if necessary. What interested me most about the island was how amazingly scenic it was. I could get lost in the stories I dreamt up just looking at it. In the north of the island is a port which runs the whole Gorgon project, run by Chevron, which is something I'm attached to, what work I'm doing that is.

The helicopter flew out over the sea and let me tell you, helicopters are amazing o_o but don't be too afraid of them, like a plane or a bus or even a car I think all travel feels the same when you get down to it, still would love to fly one though ¬_¬

We came to the rig and entered the heli room. I still didn't know anyone at this point and so I sat there feeling sheepish the whole time. We watched a silly video and then we had some food and found our rooms before being shown around the rig. It definitely felt a lot bigger than I thought it would. After that we headed round to a shipping container with 'Baker Hughes' written on it and I was convinced that our office wouldn't be in there, but just look at me now, I'm writing in it. So yeah, it was weird at the time too. This unit is small and I have to sit on a horrible stool all day feeling the burn.

My job, consists of waiting for the cuttings to come up from the drilled bore hole where oil based mud is blasted at the rock to help drilling. When the cuttings come to the surface its my job to clean my so that I can make a section with which to bring to the wellsite geologist. His job is to note down the rock type, porosity and other things which are of importance to the company and the project. Do I do anything else you may ask other than wash rocks... no. Welcome to the world of the oil and gas industry, I get paid to sit here wasting my time.,

About the rig. Supporting the rig are two support vessels. One is blue and is called the something Nexus and the other is red and is called the Far Swan. These have to hang around the rig, one at a time. They stay for five days then head back to port hedland and then switch shifts.

From the rig side you can look down into the water and sometimes see sharks and tuna swimming about.

The BHI unit has a door and the unit is pressurised so that any gas leak, the gas won't be drawn in. If the door is held open for 40 seconds then the whole thing shuts down to prevent an ignition source, so anyone holding the door open gets yelled at. There is also a very noisy air conditioner at the back of the unit which means we have to wear ear plug while simply sitting in here. There is a tiny escape door at the back which is the size of a chimney and it leads right to a wall made by another container.

On the first night I was there, there was a fire muster. We had to assemble by our lifeboats. At first Sydney, the mud logger I work with from Nigeria, thought it was a drill that we didn't have to attend, which is just clumsy in my view. Anyway we headed there. There is one thing I learnt from this and that is that you can never be too experienced. I went to the wrong lifeboat to start with. The muster was because of a fire in the engine room, but it was minor and was put out before we even mustered but it was still an important lesson. When we got back I heard someone say that was the third real alarm in twenty years working offshore... not sure what to make of that because it makes me feel that when it happens, it happens big o_o.

I thought it was silly that there was a certain way to walk on the stairs here but if you see the steepness of them you understand why. I think its something you can take with you anyway because if you fall on the stairs the only thing you can really do is reach behind you not in front so while you wouldn't need to hold the hand rail all the time, be prepared if you do trip to grab the rail behind.

One thing about the rig is that there are four cranes for bringing 'baskets' on board from the support vessel and when these are swinging across you stay well clear, however some people don't and it makes you feel silly for standing there not doing anything. Also its pretty odd to see a container like that swinging around, I guess that's just something I'm not used to.

They do your washing for you here. All you need to do is, at the end of your shift, put whatever you want washed into one of the bags in the room and leave it outside. Then they take it and wash it in a massive industry washing machine... every night.

The food here is pretty good. I must admit that even though its free and there is a lot of it I no longer like the idea of someone else cooking for you and then you finding out what it is a moment before you choose off the menu. I mean its nice but there's something a miss with me recently, but I shouldn't complain. They do a great deal of meat though and sometimes the chef can appear to be lazy and do a little range of choice. I could go on about the food here but for now I must admit that I like it, and I put on 4kg after five weeks :/

When I first came to the rig I was a genius and forgot to bring trainers. Turns out that I thought I didn't have space in my bag but that's not an excuse. So I got given some Crocs... which I gave to Steven for free when I got back form the rig, before I was given these I just slid about in socks, I see no problem there ^_^

I didn't have a helmet and on the chopper there we brought a box with one in, but I had to wear a green one, oh well. If there is one thing I've realised its that I stick out like a sore thumb as no one else looks like me, but I don't care :P My coverals have a blue bottom half, I have long hair and a green helmet and without coverals I wear a red shirt when everyone else wears Transocean tops or dark clothes, good out Juddy being awkward.

From the store room they were handing out bottles so I went down at got one, all by myself, pride, but its a stupid bottle. There is a cap that comes off easily and then its just a long hole. Those camel back bottle are much better as you bite it to drink, these... they could spill in any bag. One thing you should know, I don't have a proper chair. This unit is actually too small and the Wellsite geologist should be in a different completely. I'm not like the Directional Driller who complained about that every single day he was on shift but seeing as I've been bumped down to the stool for sitting on I am vexed. Plus when we're drilling there is nothing for me to do and so I have to sit on this painful stool all day.

Of course we're in the middle of the ocean so there are no insects but let me tell you, it is odd. Back home, you'll head somewhere in your day and at some point you should see a bug of some sort, it makes you feel that the world is complicated even if they aren't always things you wish to see, but here there is nothing of the sort and it makes life seem wrong on a subtle level.

Someone made a little bird sculpture out of mud in the shaker room. Pepels in the unit constantly bring snacks back from the gally with them, not that I'm any different. I can't wait to have that banana. Whenever there is an announcement over the speaker it plays it twice, which means that if there was a funny thing in the first call, you get to hear it twice. The ship rocking isn't too bad, its not like a normal ship because this rig has risers which tether it to the sea bed, but there is still some heave. Something interesting and magical about working at sea is the fact that you can see some amazing sunsets. The problem is that I have too much Sainsbury's attitude in me that if you stop, even for a moment and even if there is no work, you get told off.

When I go to catch samples I have to wear this mental yellow suit that makes me look like a bio hazard officer. Its to keep me clear of the mud but there is no ventilation and so it can get very hot in there. I have sweated so much that my ear defenders and glasses have been sliding off. Annoying thing, when you go for food, you have to make sure you're not late because even though the food is there for two hours they close things up half an hour before, I told you people were lazy, and so they clear all the chairs even when you're still eating. I've heard stories of the crew watching you eat so that they can take your chair when you're finished. Although the good thing is that they have big tubs of ice cream. For a long time we had a problem with scoops not being enough to penetrate the ice that the ice cream has become, but now we have some good ones.