The offshore rig

I've become rather slack in updating my blog, but better late than never I think.

 So if you have read my past entries you will know how much I hate the land rigs in Indonesia.  They are dirty, they constantly smell like something has died and is rotting right underneath you.  If you are fortunate enough to have running water, it comes out brown and smells horrible.  The bathroom is an adventure in itself since you are considered lucky to have a bacteria ridden toilet.  The food is inedible at best, mostly consisting of soups (refer to the previous comment about the brown water).  Yeah you get the point.  After being on a land rig for a month I was extremely happy to hear that I would be sent offshore.


View of the rig from the boat

The first rig I went to was somewhere in the Java sea.  This was an old BP rig and had many of my fellow North Americans on it.  I shared a bedroom with one of the other female engineers I was working with and it came equipped with it's very own semi-private bathroom.  The food was amazing and instead of goats intestines and brown soup we were served things like lasagna, and tacos!  There was ice cream 24/7 as well as fruits and vegetables.  I was sad that I had to say goodbye to that rig and all of my new North American friends on Christmas day and head back to Jakarta.

Offshore accommodation

The next rig I went to was for an exploration well on a Chinese rig, also in the Java Sea somewhere.  This time the boat ride out took 24 hours, and since it was a small boat and rough seas that was an adventure on its own.  Our crew included another international employee, and lucky for me she was from China.  Turns out she was more valuable than gold on this rig as the crew was almost entirely Chinese and spoke no English.  Even with a language barrier, it was still easy to see that every one was just as friendly as the previous location.  The rig was brand new (aka clean) and even came with our own flat screen tv's in our room.  The food was a little sketchy at best, and we were served some weird shit like turtle soup, buffalo skin (with hair still attached), chicken neck stir fry, etc., so I  was happy to find toast and peanut butter available 24/7.  During my two week stay I had a sinus infection.  When I went to see the rig doctor (who happens to moonlight as the chef) he diagnosed me with too much internal heat (I still don't know what that means) and gave me some Chinese herbs to clear that up, and no they didn't help.  Whenever we had any free time on the rig I worked on my ping-pong skills, which improved drastically after we had a 2 days of no drilling. 

Unfortunately I am writing this from a land rig in Indonesia, but I guess I have to take some bad with the good.  Plus, my fear of insects has almost completely disappeared after constantly being attacked by them.