ciao ciao

PREFACE: As you know, I work with a bunch of Italians over here. In Italian, the word “ciao” means both hello and goodbye. This, however, is not the case in Portuguese where ciao only means goodbye. Since I am completely fluent in both Italian and Portuguese I often confuse everyone I work with by saying ciao for both hello and goodbye. So, for reference, the title of this blog – ciao ciao – means bye bye in both Italian and Portuguese :)

I consider myself a pretty adventurous person, but I have to admit that I was terrified my entire helicopter flight offshore – both ways. I don’t know what it is, but those things just do not seem safe enough to me. The pilots are extremely qualified and yadda yadda but it’s still scary. Anyways, my first experience offshore was a good one. There are only 170 people that live on the platform, so it’s a very close-knit groups of folks. I went to the morning safety meeting, and each person who spoke addressed the crowd as family, which I obviously LOVED :) One of the guys (from Louisiana, of course) that was taking me on tours kept saying “LG Baby.” In my normal fashion, I pretended that I knew exactly what he was talking about when, in fact, I had no clue. So I finally asked him what he was talking about and he just simply said – Life is Good, Baby. Life is Good. What a great way to kick off Thanksgiving week – LG, baby!

After tours all day, walking up and down thousands of stairs, I was completely exhausted. There is no wifi in the bunk rooms, so I went up to the top deck watched a storm roll in and read for two hours. It was soooo nice! Maybe I'll make a New Year's resolution to spend more time away from my phone/ipad/computer and try to live the Malongo-life when during my time off - minus the bugs and mess hall food, or course :)

Panoramic view from the helideck

Watching a storm roll in

Does rain make noise when it falls on the water? The answer is YES

Compressor down?

Nothing for MILES

Sanha PPP

Thanksgiving in Malongo seems like just another day, and feels NOTHING like Thanksgiving at home because it is SO stinking hot – 98F on Thanksgiving Day! However, I was able to uphold my yearly tradition and eat entirely too much. I actually went to 3 different Thanksgiving dinners: the mess hall, the prison yard, and the slab. I had everything from fried turkey to steak to hot links to papaya – no pumpkin pie though so you better believe I will catch up for lost time over Christmas. A few photos from Malongo Thanksgiving, clearly there was no shortage of turkeys...

Chefmaster Jimmy. He loves gin (both the drink and the card game) and the Cowboys, we get along great

Tomas, our civil inspector, calls me Mother all the time because I do this super annoying thing where I check up on everyone all the time – usually over the radio. I’m actually surprised that I haven’t gotten reprimanded yet for taking up too much air time on our project radio frequency. Anyway, this past week Tomas, Jose (from Cabinda), and Prabhu (from India) all went to the Malongo driving school and got their driver’s licenses. Turns out that I’m not the only one who was a little rusty on a manual transmission. I have no clue how these hooligans passed the driving test because they are terrible – 10 times worse than me. I feel like the mother of three 15 year old boys teaching them how to drive a stick shift. Friday morning we got in the car with Tomas driving and Prabhu in the back seat, and all I could do was laugh. Tomas said he was getting so good at driving that he could take us anywhere we wanted to go. Mr Prabhu, in his very thick Indian accent, replied “Mr Tomas please do not take us to the clinic” and then proceeded to give Tomas driving instructions from the back seat (sounds like someone else I know – LISA JOHNSON). Thank goodness the maximum speed in camp is 40km/hr (25mph)…

Some of our team left yesterday, and we will have new folks coming and leaving (including ME!) next week. Those of us that are left are heading to Petromar’s camp in Cabinda this afternoon: Angela our logistics coordinator from Scotland, Danny Angela’s back-to-back from England, Jose our document controller from Cabinda, Dialla our HES lead from England, and Tomas from Luanda. We are going to have an early Christmas celebration lunch with good company and good wine :)

More obligatory photos around camp....

"Hey Mom, wait for me!!!!!!!"

It's taken me 2 months, but I finally got a baby with her Momma. So cute I can't even stand it!

"Do not touch the wildlife"....

woops!

24 days down, 4 to go! xoxo…

alli the ostrich

The blog is a day early this week because I’m going to be back up in the air tomorrow! I got an opportunity to take a trip offshore tomorrow. I’m really excited and slightly nervous for my first helicopter ride to one of our offshore platforms. I’m leaving around 5AM tomorrow morning, and will head about 30 miles mostly West and a little South of the Malongo camp. I’ll be touring the area and looking at some of the points where our project will be connecting to the existing platform, spend the night, and then head back into camp on Monday afternoon. I’ve heard that the food on our platforms far exceeds the mess hall on camp, so let’s be honest – I’m really just on this trip for the food…and to take a bunch of awesome photos from the helicopter ride :)

This past week has been super busy. We finished up a major construction milestone, our first pipeline road crossing. I was so excited when I got to send out an email to all of the major stakeholders – supervisors and superintendents in the area. When I sent the email I attached a few photos to brag on how well my crews did, completing the job a day early! After I sent the email I went back to look at the photos just reminiscing on how awesome we are and got smacked right back down to Earth. I had attached one awesome photo of the crane placing one of the casing pipes and another photo of me – yes JUST me – in front of the ocean view near the site work (which I was sending to Mom). For clarification, what I am trying to say is that I sent a “selfie” to about 30 very important people. Most of yall know that I don’t typically get embarrassed very easily, however in this case the word mortified is an understatement. I scrambled to recall the message, but since I had sent the email with a high importance flag, my recall was a failure in most cases. Luckily, the relationship with folks that received my super cute picture is at a point that they can openly poke fun at me for doing stupid things – however when I finally see our portfolio MANAGER that received my picture, I am probably still going to want to hide my head in the sand. Just another day in the life of Allison Johnson…

BEFORE...

AFTER!

On Friday we had an awesome barbeque celebration for all of the workers to reward them for completing our first road crossing without incidents and ahead of schedule. The same company that provides food for the mess hall does all of the catering around camp as well, but usually the food is higher quality than what’s offered the mess hall. I was SO excited when I saw that there was what appeared to be a ball of fried cheese – like a mozzarella stick. Naturally, I put 3 on my plate and took a gigantic bite as soon as I sat down – NOT cheese. It was a fried hardboiled egg. It took everything I had first, not to puke and second, not to spit it out right back on to my plate. Lesson learned – do not assume anything is normal in Malongo. Other than that the celebration was a complete success! Note: We were giving out hats, and I was forced to participate...please disregard the fact that I look like a boy.

My people...

Cruz (trying to avoid the picture), Francesco, David, and John (one of the super important people who received my "selfie")

Handing out awards...clearly, no one takes me seriously

Tomas - my main man

At 26 years old, this coming week will be my first holiday away from home. I’ll be missing everyone just a little bit extra as we celebrate Thanksgiving – and HOPEFULLY a Texas Tech win over Texas! I’ve talked to a bunch of folks, and they have reassured me that there will be PLENTY of turkey available on Thursday. Unfortunately, I think my hopes for a pumpkin pie are out the window but I’ll just load up on that during Christmas at home! I have SO much to be thankful for this year. Most importantly my amazing friends and family back home...I couldn't be living this crazy life without your support :)

I couldn't post a blog without some wildlife - tiny pretty blue bird

Past the halfway point – 17 days down, 11 to go! xoxo…

odds and ends

There are lots of weird things about Malongo – food, scenery, wildlife, hair styles (thanks humidity), just to name a few – but I think the oddest thing is the constant arrival and departure of folks on camp aka “crew change.” I am so used to coming going work and seeing the same faces day in and day out, but that’s not the case here and I’ve decided that I have a love/hate relationship with the constant crew change. As most of you know, when I meet someone I need to know everything – where they are from, wife’s name, how many kids they have (plus names, ages, hobbies), past work positions/locations, our 6 degrees of separation, favorite color – you catch my drift. By the time I even get people’s names down, they are gone (without saying bye, because that’s impossible) and their back to back is here. So I’m back to square one. And what’s REALLY not fair is that everyone knows my name, because there are about 15 total women here and curly red hair isn’t very forgettable. On the plus side, things are always changing and the world is becoming smaller and smaller – six degrees is more like 3 over here.

Not much has gone on around here this past week. LOTS of eating delicious food made by Chef Lefort (my construction rep). Thank goodness he headed back to Louisiana on Saturday - now its back to the mess hall with hopes to loose the 2-5 lbs that I packed on in my first week and a half here! The weather has been oddly wonderful for this time of year. I keep hearing about the monsoons that are coming, but all we have had is a little rain in the mornings and at night with clear afternoons. I'm currently knocking on wood because this weather has been wonderful for our construction schedule.

Here are some photos from last week - snakes, clear skies, and the circle of life...

A couple times a week I walk down and back up the main hill during lunch time, this is from one of my walks. You can barely see one of the flares offshore in the picture

It took me about 30 pictures to get a good one of this little guy. I think he thought I wanted his lunch...

This is a baby green mamba snake, it's about 18" long (I zoomed in quite a bit). We have black and green mambas in camp that can 8-10' long, yuck.

Successful crane lift - BONUS, beach background :)

10 days down, 18 to go! xoxo...

back on the grind

I am back safe and sound in my 3rd home away from home! The trip this time was a million times easier than the first time around. My return flight was pretty much the same group of folks that I returned home with back in October, so it was nice to walk into the airport with a bunch of familiar faces. Once I get a consistent schedule I will “crew change” with the same group of folks each time I come to and from Malongo, which means everyone will get used to me roaming the aisle of the plane in my PJ’s for most of the 15 hour flight :)

When I arrive back on camp, it’s around 13:30 (6AM Texas time) and most everyone goes straight to the salad bar to get the last of any cold cuts or lettuce since the dining areas usually close at 13:00. My lunch on Thursday was lettuce (no dressing), rice and beans – that’s when it sinks in that you’re really back in Malongo. During lunch time there are two options for food: salad bar and mess hall. The mess hall is true Angolan food geared towards the ~3,500 nationals that come into camp for work each day. I went there once last hitch to give it a try and chose one of the beef/bean stew options. Things didn’t go well, so I stick to the salad bar most days.

Thursday and Friday night were the worst because I was going to bed too early and waking up between 1 and 3AM, but I am pretty much adjusted to the time difference now. Yesterday afternoon my construction coordinator, Phil, came into my office asking if I had a minute. That minute turned into about an hour because he got me into the kitchen to learn how to make roux for the gumbo he was making. For those of us who aren’t coon asses, roux is the heart of any gumbo and if you mess it up the whole pot is ruined. It was a lot of pressure considering that the folks we were cooking for were about 97% Louisiana born and raised. Thanks to Phil’s supervision, I have to say that the shrimp and okra gumbo (fun fact: okra originated in West Africa) turned out pretty well. With a few more lessons from Phil in the kitchen and a couple more rounds of Bourre (boo-ray) I will fit in with the rest of the Bayou folks around here.

Leaving home is tough, but everyone here makes it much easier. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing the stories all these guys have about the good ol days from first jobs as gandy dancers to bartering with natives while drilling exploratory wells in Sudan...

3 days down, 25 to go! xoxo