Operations and fashion failures

Hey folks,

 

I´m writing again from the rig.  I´m still here- 15 days and going strong.  It´s eight o´clock, and I´ve been up since 2am, after going to sleep at 11pm.  We´re waiting to start the second part of job.  I´ll probably be awake for another 12 hours at least.  We´ll see.  If there´s one thing I´ve learned (actually I´ve been learning tons), it´s that everything takes forever.. much longer than you think it should. 

 

The first part of our job went really well.  We connected our tool to the string of pipes going into the oil well, but then we have to stay there and watch while they run enough drill pipe (generic pipe that the rig has tons of), to get to the correct depth for us to operate our tool.  We had to get to almost 5000 meters (about 3 miles).  Vagner (my coworker) and I took turns sitting in the driller´s cabin while they lowered 180 stands (90 feet each) of drill pipe at about 10 minutes per stand.  The challenge was not the actual job, but staying awake during the boring, repetitive-ness.

 

Toward the end of the drill pipe fun, we had fluid flowing back out the top of the pipe as we were lowering the pipe into the well.  It was more than normal, and the wind was pretty strong.  It ended up blowing the fluid all over the place and making the whole rig dirty.  The poor guys working on the rig floor were covered in the stuff.  The craziest part was when the wind changed direction, and the fluid started covering the windows of the driller´s cabin.  It looked like the windows were covered in melted chocolate ice-cream (nasty smelling melted chocolate ice-cream).  We kept working, despite not being able to see, using just the gauges inside the cabin.

 

I totally dropped the ball on this job.  Haha.. gotcha.. I bet you think I messed up, right?  Wrong!  When we activate our tool, we drop a brass ball down the tubing to create a seal in the tool, so we can pressure up the tubing above the ball.  (Hopefully that makes some sense).  I got the honor/responsibility of dropping the ball down the tube and watching it disappear into the stinky, melted chocolate ice-cream fluid.

 

This morning, we were preparing all our equipment for this next phase of the job.  It was still dark, and from up on the drilling platform, we could see tons of lightning in the distance.  As it started coming closer, I wondered if the rig would stop working in a thunderstorm.  I stood there for a moment and considered that I was standing on a completely metal structure with a massive metal tower sticking into the sky... surrounded by water.  Sounds stupider than Ben Franklin flying a kite...  Electrocution anyone?  Haha.. just kidding.  I´m assuming there are some massive lightning rods on this thing, because the storm reached us and we didn´t stop at all (At $7000 per hour, a rig needs a better reason than silly weather to stop operations).  Anyway... that´s a lot of oilfield engineering talk.  I´m sorry if it´s not as fun to read as other stuff.  (In case my emails gave you the impression that I was permanently on vacation in Brazil/France... be not mistaken... I´m workin, workin, workin).

 

Most of my friends that I made have since left the rig, so I haven´t played dominoes in quite a while.  I´m getting to know a new set of people, but since I work whenever they need me, I have to take any opportunity to sleep and to eat when I can.  My poor natural clock is so confused. It doesn´t know when to be awake or when to sleep. 

 

I have a little notebook that I write all my observations and job notes in.  It´s so funny- as my portuguese gets better, I´ll write one thing in english, the next in portuguese, then back to english.  It just depends on what language I happen to be operating in at the moment of writing whatever it is down.  Anyone who would pick it up to read it would think I´m seriously confused about what language I speak.

 

Oh, I forgot to mention the fashion horrors that are completely acceptable here on the rig.  We all have boots that we wear while working, but you can´t wear them in the cafeteria, common room, or bedrooms, so you have to change into flip-flops in the hallway.  You wear socks with your boots, so when you change, everyone ends up wearing socks with their flip-flops.  It´s so ugly and feels so strange, yet it´s totally acceptable... all the cool kids are doing it.  To make matters worse, the laundry guys write your room number on your clothes when they wash them to make sure you get your stuff back.  So... you have a bunch of guys walking around in shorts, socks, and flip-flops, with a three digit number written in black permanent marker on their socks.  Watch out New York Fashion Week, here we come!

Well.. I´ll stop writing now.. I hope you all have a wonderful day- eating and sleeping on a normal schedule :-P 

 

Love,

Life on a rig: lots of dominoes to play and even more food to eat

Hey folks,

I´m currently offshore. It´s actually rather comical how things have been going so far.

So there I was (this is how all good stories begin, right?) on Tuesday morning. I was supposed to catch the van to get to Rio at 6am at my building. I woke up early, showered, etc. and headed downstairs to be five minutes early for the van. I thought that would be plenty of time. Note: Macae Palace (my building) has entrances on both sides that are equally used. I got downstairs and there was no van to be seen- on either side. I inquired as to the previous departure of the van to the guys working at the front desks on each side, but they both said that they hadn´t seen the van yet. So as time began to pass, I thought it was strange that the van would be late... it´s never late. I ended up calling and waking up the woman from the logistics department for my base to ask what was going on. She told me that the van was already on its way to Rio.

My Response at this point: Oh Holy Crap!! I missed the van, I´m going to miss my flight to my first job... I´m a fricking genius. (heavy on the sarcasm here if you´re reading out loud)

Anyway.. I tried calling my direct boss for 20 minutes and he wouldn´t answer the phone. I had to wake up his boss to approve alternate transportation to get to Rio. To spare you the rest of the crazy details, I was pretty stressed from 6am until 11am when I finally got on anther van to Rio and had a confirmed alternate flight to Sao Paulo. I´m still looking for gray hairs that may have resulted from the experience, but in the end it all worked out. Hopefully I won´t make any other large mistakes while I´m out here and everyone will forget about the van mix-up.

And now on the lighter side of things:

I got to ride in a helicopter. That was pretty nifty. The pilots found out that it was my first ride, so they made sure that I had one of the best seats with the best views. Cool pilots! You have to wear ear plugs and noise-proof ear muffs during the ride, so the ride ends up being really peaceful. The area we took off from was covered in long ridges of foliage-covered mountains. We headed out to the open sea, and the views were really amazing. The windows are way better in a chopper than in an airplane, plus, you can actually open the window during the flight and not get sucked out. Once we lost sight of land, it was really cool. There was nothing in sight but blue sky and blue sea and the occasional puffy white cloud.

Since being on the rig, the operation has been delayed. It´s been five days now and my days consist of waking up, showering and dressing in the dark as quietly as possible (my roommate works nights and sleeps during the days), eating, watching movies in the common room (mostly in portuguese so I understand about 35% of the dialogue), eating, playing checkers, eating, watching movies, eating, and talking a lot of smack about the games that I win in dominoes. I´ve played approximately 84 games of dominoes since I learned how they play on Thursday. I occasionally kick butt and then feel obliged to remind my opponents of my novice-ness. (All smack talking is done in Portuguese, mind you, and I think I can do it pretty well. I actually think that harassing the guys makes them respect me more.)

Did I mention that we eat all the time? The cafeteria is never closed for more than three hours. It´s great, but it´s horrible at the same time. Good news: food and snacks are always available. Bad news: food and snacks are always available. It´s double-edged sword shaped like a messroom, aimed at my midsection. Eating and sleeping all day is a recipe to gain a bunch of weight, which I would prefer not to do.

We should start doing our actual work at the end of this week. Great, huh? It´s been like a week of vacation, trapped on a rig, surrounded by nothing but water. But I´m making lots of friends. I´m trying to be my outgoing, nice self without giving the wrong impression to all these guys offshore. (If you know what I mean.) I´m finding that I smile a lot, and apparently people think I´m a little flirtacious. I try to control it, but most of the time I can´t help it. :-) Most people are impressed with my Portuguese skills- that´s a bonus. I´m still lost most of the time in meetings; people talk all at once about multiple topics with words flying in every direction, and I struggle to catch most of it. In normal conversations, people are always eager to practice their English with me, and I can hold a decent conversation in Portuguese.

Anyway, I think that´s enough for now. I should probably go find a worthy dominoes opponent or something else productive like that.

More later!

Tchau,