Update from Wellington

Again, it has been too long since I last posted something. Sorry. I will try to get on here more frequently but we seem to be rather busy lately.

The rest of my trip to Europe was good. I really enjoyed Vienna, lots of cafes and good places to eat and the streets seemed full of people all of the time, which I kind of like, it makes it feel vibrant I guess. Romania was, well ..... interesting. First off the driving was surprisingly awful, and I expected it to be pretty bad. During my first hour (of a 3 hour drive to the black seas coast) I saw an 18 wheeler truck backing up in the wrong direction on the highway, past several uncontrolled highway intersections (no stop signs for anyone, so people try to cross the highway in front of the cars driving at highway speeds, which was >130 km/h) in which a digger tried to cross in front of us (I am glad that my driver knew what he was doing!!), and a horse and buggy driving on the highway, not to mention the limited use of seatbelts, ridiculous speeds and impatience.

I spent two days on the black sea coast. One day I traveled to an OMV offshore facility and the other day I just visited the main onshore office. The drive up to the heliport was like a scene from a horror movie, where the people are driving up to what looks like an abandoned school or something, a long, deteriorating road with long yellow grass and very few trees, a sign archway that is falling apart so you no longer know what it was. As we drove up this road I started to get nervous since I was going to have to fly in a helicopter from this place, we passed an army base being patrolled by armed guards and then pulled into the parking lot, which was a field (this really didn't help build my confidence) and beside it were old broken down helicopters. Luckily, as we walked out of the parking lot I looked up to see a brand new building, phew. The trip offshore ended up being perfectly fine.

I also spent a few days in Bucharest. It is hard to explain what it was like. I guess in the early 1900s it was called the "Paris of the East", and some of the old buildings from that time are still there, however, many have been left empty and without repair and are now falling down. Then, during the communist reign, the leader decided to build tons of concrete apartment buildings, demolishing many of the old Parisian style buildings. Now, since the fall of the communists there has been some slow rebuilding going on. So, as you walk down the main city streets you see restored Parisian style buildings, then big concrete apartment block, then a building falling down. Overall, Romania was a nice country to visit but I am not sure I would do it on my own again.

Ted returned from field work just a few days after I got back from Europe. Since then we have basically just stayed around Wellington, together! It has been nice to spend some time in our place together. We have spent most of our time either riding our bikes or trying to get our garden fixed up, it hadn't been weeded for over 4 months so it needed lots of work. Next time I will put up some pictures of the garden.

Time for bed, hopefully you are not totally snowed in and freezing (it was 20 C here today!).

Travel Socks and Sauerkraut!

Well, here I am sitting in a hotel room in Vienna. It took me 4 flights totalling more than 24 hrs in the air to get here from New Zealand. Normally, after flying for more than say 4 hrs my feet and legs swell up and it is just uncomfortable, but not this time. I bought these fantastic compression socks just before leaving Auckland and they were a miracle. I wore them on both long flights and had no problems. Not that I wasn't restless and tired of being on a plane at the end as usual, but my feet fit into my shoes. I would highly recommend a pair to anyone going on a long flight.

Ok, enough about the socks. I am currently travelling on an "OMV business familiarization tour", or at least that is what I call it. The head office of OMV is in Vienna so they flew me over here to meet some of the HSE experts who work at the head office. Since I came this far they thought I should also tour a couple of our other facilities to get an idea of what they are like. I spent last week touring around the country side near Vienna, checking out a bunch of well sites that are run by our Austrian branch. I even got to see a well being drilled, which was kind of cool, although it would get boring pretty fast. This week I head to Romania to visit another offshore facility. On the weekend I start my trip home but will stop in Singapore for a few days before finally getting back to New Zealand and the Spring.

This weekend I decided to head to the Austrian Alps and took the train to a city called Innsbruck. It kind of reminded me of Canmore in terms of location within the mountains but was much bigger. November in the mountains here is similar to November in the mountains in Canada, not enough snow to ski but too much to really hike. I was able to do some hiking on the lower section of the mountain though.

One of the common things in the Alps, both in Switzerland and Austria at least, is that there are these mountain lodges all over the place. They are basically farms which also run a small cafe and possibly a guest house as well, high up on the mountain. I decided to make my way up to one that was about two thirds of the way up the mountain, which turned out to be just into the snow, it took 2 hrs to reach it. I guess I wasn't the only one with this lodge in mind as it was already packed when I arrived so I had to sit outside, which really wasn't that bad considering I had a view down into the valley where the town was, although it was a bit chilly. The menu was only in German and the only words I recognized were for cured meat and kraut, don't ask, I am not sure why those are words I recognized either. I picked the one item on the menu that had both of those words, as well as a nice big wheat beer. It turns out I had ordered dumplings with cured meat and sauerkraut which luckily tasted pretty good.

I took a different route when I headed back down, and ended up taking a route that was maybe not the most direct. I knew that if I just kept walking downhill I would eventually make it back to the town, which I did eventually, but I had to do some back tracking. Someone might want to put some more signs up on the hiking trails though.

Hope you are all doing well and enjoying the Fall.
Meg

My nose is sun burnt and my legs are tired!

Yup, you read that correctly, my nose is sunburnt. I guess that means it is officially Spring and perhaps time to start wearing sunscreen. It is Sunday night and I have just enjoyed a completely dry and mostly sunny weekend, albeit very windy. Naturally I spent the time outside on my bike and enjoying the city.

We have now explored the main mountain biking areas in Wellington and the riding is great. Today's tracks (see definition below) were similar to Edmonton, mostly rolling up and down, but with more technical downhill and longer uphills, hence the tired legs. Somehow I managed to stay on my bike which is good, less bruising that way. A lot of the other tracks in Wellington are loops with long non-technical uphills (like 20-50 minutes of up) followed by fast downhills. Like Edmonton, there are lots of trails right in city, making a lunch time or after work ride possible.

I am beginning to understand why Wellington is referred to as Windy Welli. Today I actually got blown over while riding my bike. One minute I was riding along slowly just before heading down a hill and the next minute I was on the ground.

Ted gets home on Thursday from Egypt. He has had a good trip but is looking forward to getting home, as am I. He is probably on his way either up or down Mt. Sinai right now.

Here are a few more New Zealand words and phrases.

Track - used instead of "trail", mountain bike tracks, hiking tracks, etc.
Tramp - this is what you do on the hiking tracks, meaning to hike
Knackered (sp?) - meaning really really tired, like I was at the end of today's bike ride
Good as Gold - an expression used to identify that things are all set and ready to go. For example: Boss says "Meg is everything ready for tomorrow's presentation?" I reply, "Yup, it's good as gold"

Spring Time??

Spring officially begins on September 1st, not the 21st. I am not sure why it doesn't coincide with the equinox like the change of seasons does in North America but just to prove it was the right day the rain finally stopped and it was a beautiful warm day. There is a saying around here that "you can't beat Wellington on a nice day" and I have to admit I agree. Maybe the enjoyment has something to do with the long periods of time without the sun and a lot of wind and rain, but it is pretty impressive to see the city in bright sun, surrounded by green mountains and ocean.

We have now been in our house for over two months and are beginning to settle into our new neighborhood. Each suburb in Wellington has its own town center or village. Brooklyn has a couple of pubs (one which is pretty good called the Corner Store), a coffee shop, an Indian restaurant, a Thai restaurant, a fish and chip shop (or Fush and Chups to the kiwis), a Chinese take-away place, an old theatre that still plays movies and also has a cafe (The Penthouse), a library and two dairy's (little grocery stores). The village is only a 15 minutes walk from our place so it is easy to walk down for dinner and a movie or an evening at the pub watching rugby (the All Blacks won the Tri-Nations cup and are undefeated so far this season, in case anyone was wondering).

Brooklyn is bordered by a large forest area that runs from the West edge of Brooklyn further west to the ocean and south to the ocean as well. This means we have hiking/running and biking trails pretty close to us, and some great views. Despite the reasonably consistent rain lately we have managed to get out and do some exploring. Below are some photos from some trails that are in a bike park called Makara Peak.

The view of the city from the top of Makara.


The view towards the South Island, this area has lots of wind turbines.


Another view of the South Island, you can see the snow on the mountains.


We hope you are all doing well and enjoying a nice Fall.

Airports, earthquakes, and plants.

Well, it has been a few weeks since I promised some more house pictures so here they finally are. Life has been rather busy lately. Ted and I have both been traveling quite a bit for work. My companies (OMV) main office is in Wellington but we also have a small office in New Plymouth, which is a 1 hour flight from Wellington and is the base for our offshore facility. I have spent at least two days a week there for the last month and will be there at least once a week until mid-October. Ted was in the Philippines for work at the beginning of August, is currently doing field work in Taupo (about 4 hours drive away, I know because I drove up to visit this weekend) and he leaves for Egypt in about a week and a half. So, we see lots of airports these days and are both getting rather tired of traveling. I can almost recite the Air New Zealand pre-flight safety briefing. I guess we are getting lots of airmiles though which is good.

I was in New Plymouth when I felt my first big earthquake earlier this week. It didn't last long and wasn't really that big but I did feel two good shakes with steady movement in between, it probably lasted a total of 25 seconds, not even long enough to get nervous or think about going for cover. It turns out there was a 5.1 ~ 100 km away from New Plymouth.

Our new house has a is surrounded by a large garden with many plants we do not recognize. A few weekends ago we looked at the garden and realized it had changed from when we got here, the ferns were significantly larger and seemed to be blocking out a lot of other "stuff". So, we decided it was time to try "gardening", only, neither one of us knew what that meant. I remembered weeding when I was little but as we don't recognize the plants, we have difficulty distinguishing weeds from plants we want. We also remembered trimming things with clippers, so, we headed to the garden store to get some gardening gloves and clippers. We got home and started wandering around the house trying to figure out what to cut. We did figure out how to trim some of the bushes, Ted working to make perfect right angles and flat planes. We could not, however, decide whether the ferns truly were weeds or just needed to be trimmed back. We decided to trim them, rather than pull them out, as they did seem to be planted in specific locations. It turns out that was a good idea, someone told us they are quite expensive to buy, phew. I think we need to buy a book on gardening in New Zealand.

Now for the house photos....



This is the view from the deck in the backyard, you can even see snow on the mountains in the distance. The deck that I was standing on to take this picture will be our first improvement project next summer since the house inspector said we shouldn't use it.


This is our living room, it is really nice to have our furniture back.


Here is the dinning room, Ted is working on setting up our internet.


Here is our bedroom, note the boxes we are using as furniture, the hot water bottle on the floor in front of the end table and in the lower left corner you can see the space heater. When we first got here I noticed that a lot of stores were selling hot water bottles, which I didn't understand. I had used a hot water bottle when I was little and couldn't sleep, but I couldn't figure out why they were so popular here. It wasn't until our first night in the house when we went to bed and found our sheets absolutely freezing. So, now we heat up the bed with the hot water bottle.

Here is our crazy closet, we spent a lot of our first few weeks in the house getting this organized but it is definitely worth it now. This room is actually bigger than the small bedroom but it is connected to our bedroom and can't really be used for anything other than a closet, so, a giant closet it is.

Here is the garage. Ted is very excited to have a place to store and work on the bikes. We have been out for a few rides. From where we live we can be on rails in less than 10 minutes, there is a lot of uphill to get there though. We just got our roof racks set up on the new car so now we can explore some of the biking areas that are a bit far to bike to.

Here is the side deck, which is nicely sheltered from the wind. We bought this half wine barrel to use as a planter, now we just have to figure out what to plant in it.

Here is the music room. We got the piano working last month so next we need to get an Amp so that Ted can play his guitar.

Here is the computer room/office/extra spare sleeping space. So far though it is more of a storage room.

And last, we have the spare room, don't worry we do plan to buy furniture.

Well, that is it. We definitely need some more furniture but the main living areas are pretty much set up. Now we just have to be home long enough to enjoy it.

We hope you are all doing well.

We own a piece of New Zealand - the big move

Well, here I am, sitting on OUR couch in OUR house in Wellington New Zealand. Wow, it does feel pretty nice to own a house but even after 4 weeks I still don't think it has fully set in.

We got the house on July 2nd and our stuff was scheduled to arrive on the 3rd, so we camped out in the empty house the night of the 2nd.



We woke the next morning to a gorgeous sunny day, which is rare in Wellington winters, usually it is raining and cold. The movers arrived late, but to our relief did eventually show up. The road our house is on is so narrow they blocked the whole street with their truck. Not the best way to make friends with your neighboors but it turned out none of them needed to get out anyway so it was ok.



They gave Ted a clip board so that he could keep track of everything coming off the truck, so he stayed out in the driveway while I helped carry things inside. It was rather impressive, how they were able to pack everything in so tightly and kind of scary watching them try to take it off the truck without a ladder, they didn't drop anything though.



Unpacking all of our boxes was like a really big Christmas. Everything had been packed up for almost 5 months so we had forgotten about a lot of things.

We took two weeks off work in order to unpack and organize the house. We had figured we would be mostly finished with the house after the first week and spend the second week relaxing and exploring our neighborhood... right! We spent most of the first week just unpacking and beginning to organize and the second week building shelves and hanging pictures. We were pretty well set-up by the end of our vacation though.

During those 2 weeks we got to know the local hardware store quite well, buying shelving and other things needed to get ourselves organized. The chain is called Mitre 10. They have both small local stores and then a few large stores they call Mitre 10 Mega. The Mitre 10 Mega is similar to a home depot.

Ted, who is very excited to have his own garage, decided that said garage needed some good shelving. We found what he wanted at... Mitre 10 Mega.

Here is Ted before the assembly started, looking excited to build his first garage shelf, note the vacation beard.



Here he is reading the directions.



Once the directions were understood it was time for assembly.



Then a decision was made that the shelf was going to be too high, so modifications were required. Unlike in our old apartment at least these modifications didn't have to take place in the kitchen, it is nice to have a garage.



Then, with a bit more assembly, the shelf was ready to hold stuff.



It was really good to have two full weeks off and we actually had some really good weather. By the end of the vacation we had the main living area, our bedroom, and of course the garage, fully "sorted". I will post some photos of the house with all our stuff in it soon.

Hope you are all doing well.
Meg and Ted

Gidday. I thought that it was time for me (Ted) to write on here and give an update of some things that I've been doing at work, so here goes.

Volcano Study: The first month I was here (March), I was in the middle of the North Island at Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngaurahoe (better know as Mt Doom from the Lord of the Rings). We flew around these volcanoes for about a month making measurements of the Earth's resistivity at ~100 locations. Meg helped out for a weekend and got a few heli rides too. The weather was great and the views amazing. Perhaps the highlight was getting flown up to, and dropped off on the summit of Mt Ngaurahoe. We made a measurement just outside of the crater, very cool! By the way, this is an active volcano, but there isn't any lava in the crater, it's all just rock at the moment. Once the pressure below builds up enough, magma in the subsurface will then erupt, and you'll hear about it on the news! Related to that... the measurements that we made will help to image the magma below the volcano. This information is quite useful to those who monitor this natural hazard.

Geothermal Work: After the volcano fieldwork, I was in Taupo (NE of the volcanoes) for about 2 weeks making measurements with the same equipment, but this time working on a geothermal energy project. New Zealand currently gets ~15% of the countries power production from geothermal energy. Basically, below the North Island of New Zealand, one tectonic plate (Pacific) is sliding beneath another one (Australian). This process generates a lot of heat, and fluids. The end result near Taupo, is that water 2-3 km below the ground is at ~350 degrees. So, energy companies drill to this depth, extract the water, at the surface it flashes to steam and they use it to drive turbines to generate electricity. The steam is then condensed and nowadays is starting to be sent back into the earth to complete the cycle. So this method of power generation has a minimal impact on the environment. Good!

Now, what am I doing? Well, the government wants to increase geothermal energy production and move away from nastier sources of energy. This will require companies to drill deeper (~4-5km) where fluid temperatures are hotter. So, to nudge companies to explore deeper (which costs more money) a project has been funded to image the deeper structures of the geothermal systems. This is what I'm working on at the moment.

What else... I'm heading to Taiwan next week for a conference and looking forward to that. I haven't been back to Taiwan since I was there collecting data for my PhD, so it will be fun to return and hang out with Chih-Wen, the student I was with while collecting my PhD data.

Other than that, Meg and I are anxiously awaiting getting to move into our new home on July 2! Less than 3 weeks away now...

To finish off, as Meg's been doing I'll explain a Kiwi phrase.
Phrase: Rattle your dags.
Translation: 'hurry up' or 'get a move on'.
Explanation: 'dags' are sheep poops that defied gravity by clinging to the sheeps bum wool. Over time, these harden up and become a permanent fixture. Then the farmer comes along to sheppard his flock, the sheep run and subsequently their dags 'rattle' to and fro.

Take care
Meg and Ted

More from the New Zealand Dictionary

Well, we now have 3 weeks and 3 days until we get our new house, not that we are keeping track. I realized that by the time we get our place, and finally unpack all the stuff we shipped, I will have gone 5 months living out of only two bags. Until a few weeks ago I really hadn't missed anything too much; I mean I wanted my bike and a few other things but otherwise was surviving. However, I think 4 months must have been the threshold because now I miss everything, my warm clothes (because it is getting kind of cold here), our familiar furniture, our books and other things to do. I am definitely tired of being in transit and looking forward to finally settling in; to be able to set up a routine and start exploring our new neighborhood will be great.

We are now living in a one bedroom, furnished apartment on The Terrace. It is actually closer to my work than I was before and still a good location for Ted heading onto the highway. It is nice to have our own space and it is still very handy to the city so we can continue to explore the area.

As it is winter here the weather has gotten kind of gloomy. So far it hasn't really been too cold, day time highs around 13C, but it does rain a lot. Luckily most of the city streets are partially covered so even in a hard rain you don't get wet, meaning we aren't totally trapped inside.

I have heard a few more New Zealand words and phrases I thought were interesting....

Sussed - Similar to "sorted", it means organized, or figured out, but is not used as often as sorted. I often hear it used in questions like "have you sussed out our travel plans?". I think I may have even heard someone say they were going to "suss" it out, as in figure it out. I definitely prefer sorted myself.

Done and Dusted - This saying is not said by everyone but those who like it, like it a lot. This is used as a further emphasis to "done" and often in the context of completing a large transaction or piece of work. For instance, our real estate agent likes to use this saying to refer to the process of buying a house and completing a purchase (or in his mind a sale). I find that people who like this one tend to use it quite frequently.

Taa - Not sure how to spell this one, but as it sounds like baa but with a T, I thought T-a-a would work. This is used as an informal shortcut for the word "thanks". Like when someone holds a door for you, you say "taa". I guess 2 syllables was 1 too many.

Well I guess that is all for now. We hope everyone is doing well.

Meg and Ted

The New House

Well, we finally bought ourselves a place to live. Whew, I didn't realize how hard buying a house was going to be, especially without Ted around much during the first few months, and in a new country.

I had a pretty good system worked out. Wednesday I picked up the local property sales magazines, then I read them and identified all the places I wanted to view. I usually called to get a few viewings set up for Friday afternoon, however, the majority were left for Sunday, open house day. Saturday or Sunday morning I would write out the times and locations of all the places and organize my day, I know DORK! I was able to see up to 11 places between 11 am and 3 pm though which is pretty impressive if I do say so myself. I would grab some water, maybe a snack, a map and head out. I think I saw over 60 houses, maybe even more.

There is definitely a variety of house styles here in Wellington. There are the old Victorian age homes, which usually needed lots of maintenance work, rewiring and redecorating, weren't insulated, had single pane glass, no parking, no closet space and no garage. However, they did have some nice features like old wood floors and artistic glass. The newer houses were a little more North American looking but still weren't insulated and had single pane glass as well. There was also an issue in the 80's where they built "leaky" homes which weren't weather tight and often had moisture and mold problems. The layout of houses was a bit different from North America as well. Most houses are built on fairly steep slops and so generally have a main floor and a smaller downstairs portion as well. The kitchen and main living space are upstairs and they often spread the bedrooms out over the two floors.

Then there is the Kiwi DIY attitude, they really like to renovate things themselves and don't always get it inspected. To add more complexity to an already complex problem there is the issue of views, wind and sun. If you have a view you likely have really high winds. Depending on which part of the hill you are on you may get morning sun, afternoon sun, both or none. Due to the fact that they don't insulate anything (oh yeah, and no central heating either) having afternoon sun can be quite important for the winter months to heat the place up. All this made it difficult to find something we liked. However, after ~2 months of looking we finally found something we liked. It is on 1 Nebraska Way and is a newer house without any leaky building problems (well, almost no problems) and it has insulation, a garage, closet space, and a view of the bay.

Now we come to the Tender process. The house buying process in Canada I believe goes like this, home owners advertise their house with a price they would like, then you find one you like and make an offer right away at a price lower than the asking price, then you negotiate back and forth a bit until you agree on a final price. In New Zealand some houses are sold through a Tender process. The owner puts the house on the market, without any indication of price, then any interested buyers have to put their offer in at the specified date and time, and not before. The vendor reviews all offers at once and can either accept one, or accept none and negotiate with someone to increase their price or change their terms. This means that you have to guess at the price and put in the best offer you can, with as few conditions, like financing and building inspections, as possible and wait until the specified Tender date. It is completely in favor of the vendor and painful for the buyer.

So, the house we saw was being sold by Tender, the tenders had to be submitted 2.5 weeks after we saw it. The 2.5 weeks meant we had time to get our finances in order and figure out what else we needed to do but it also meant waiting until the end of April. We put the offer in at 9 am on the Tender date and at 7 pm the agent called to say they had accepted our offer. I was stunned, I figured since it took so long that we hadn't gotten it.

Our offer was subject to a builders report, so after they accepted the offer we had to get the building inspection done as soon as possible. We figured it would be fine since the house looked like it was in great condition and well maintained. We were wrong. The report came back stating that there were moisture issues in the downstairs master bedroom. So, we panicked, we really liked the house and didn't want anything to be wrong with it. Once we calmed down we found a second builder to come and check out the area identified and give us a quote for fixing it. The current home owner came as well. The builder explained the issues and the home owner ended up offering to have it fixed before we moved. So, with that everything was solved and we had purchased our first house. Yeah!!!!!!!! We get to move in on July 2nd, which seems like a long way away. The following photos are from the property sales website.

This is the view of the house from the street. It has a main upstairs floor, with kitchen, living/dining room, 2 bedrooms, and then the master bedroom downstairs, on the same level as the garage.


This is the view from the main living area. We look down towards the city and Wellington Harbour.


Here is our living and dining room area, there is a conservatory as well, so you can enjoy the view but not the wind. This end of the house will get full morning sun.


The dining room and kitchen.


The conservatory, we are looking forward to sitting out here with some good wine.


Here is the master bedroom, we even have an ensuite, score or should I say Sweet As.


The kitchen.


Here is the guest room, can't you just imagine yourselves staying here???


Here is the deck, off the main living area.


Here is the music room, now Ted can play his guitar really LOUD.


Those are the main areas, there are more photos on the internet, just go to the following link, http://www.nz.open2view.com/Property/222826.

Now we just have to wait 7 weeks and then we can finally settle in.

We hope you are all doing well.

Meg and Ted

The New Car

Well, Ted is now finally back from his field work with no plan to leave for a while. It has been good to get to explore our new city together.

The first weekend he was back we ended up buying a car. We bought a 2005 Honda Accord Euro, the same color as our old Civic. The Accord Euro is actually quite similar to a civic, the back looks like a civic and the front looks like an accord. The engine is larger than our civic as well. Ted was really excited about the rims, they do look cool but I am not sure I understand the excitement.

We took the photo of the car from the peninsula across the bay from downtown Wellington. The downtown portion of the city is fairly compact. It is split up into two main parts, the business district, where my office is, and the social district with the bars and cafes. You can walk across the main business district in less than 20 minutes and the main social district in 20 minutes more. From there the suburbs spread out in all directions.

With the car we can continue to explore Wellington and the surrounding area. We found a cool beach the other day, down a long narrow road. Most of the roads here are quite narrow, some not even wide enough for two cars to pass, making it kind of nerve raking to drive, especially in our own car.

Sorry for taking so long to post again, keep checking back and I will try to update you more often.

New Zealand Dictionary

Hello, now that I have been here for several weeks I think it is about time to explain some of the popular kiwi words and phrases. The kiwi accent sounds very similar to the Australian accent with a few small differences, it sounds a bit more British. Although I can generally understand what they are trying to say there are a some interesting words and phrases that you don't hear in Canada.

1. sorted - this is kind of the same as organized
I have got your travel plans all sorted.

2. sweet as - this one is kind of the same as cool or great or just some emphasis on sweet, it sounds like they are saying sweet ass though, which when my boss says it just doesn't seem right. It is usually used at the end of a sentence.
Boss: Can you write this giant document without knowing anything about it
Meg: Sure
Boss: Sweet as

The story behind this is that in my first week of work my boss was complaining about having to write this Environment Plan for our offshore facility. So, I offered to help, when will I learn. I figured it couldn't be that hard, it was only supposed to be an addition to an existing document and I just needed to gather some information from other people and put it together, no big deal right. Wrong, it turned out to be bigger than either of us realized and I really had no idea what I was writing about. It turned out ok in the end but made for a stressful first two weeks.

3. capsicum - believe it or not it is a pepper, so a green pepper is a green capsicum

4. pumpkin - any form of squash, butternut squash = pumpkin, acorn squash = pumpkin, spaghetti squash = pumpkin, you get the idea

5. heaps - can be substituted for lots
There were heaps of cars on the highway today, or, this house will get heaps of sun in the summer.

I have to say so far heaps is definitely my favorite.

Pictures from Offshore

The top photo shows my room from the doorway. The next one shows the room from the far wall. The middle photo shows the office we use while offshore, complete with computer connection and phone. The next photo shows the beds and the last shows my bathroom. All of these are from the FPSO.

Meg's Offshore Adventures

The world has finally stopped moving, thank goodness. After spending 6 days, 120 km off the coast of New Zealand it took 2 full days for solid ground to feel solid again.

As you may know, my new job involves offshore crude production. OMV owns a Well Head Platform (WHP), and manages a Floating Production, Storage and Offtake facility (FPSO) [every good engineering blog needs a few acronyms]. The WHP has 7 crude oil wells that have been drilled into the ocean floor. From there the crude is sent to the FPSO, which is an old oil tanker that has been converted into a processing facility, that separates the crude oil from the water and gas that come up from the well with the crude. The hull of the tanker is the original hull and the production facility was built on the ships deck. The tanker has been moored to it's current location by a buoy that is held in the ships hull and is attached to the ocean floor. This buoy is not fixed in the ships hull so the ship can spin around it and ideally settle facing the swells, at least most of the time.

The photo shows both the FPSO with the WHP and drilling rig behind in the distance. The grey portion is the drilling rig and it was removed once drilling was completed, only the yellow part remains. The picture below shows another photo of the FPSO.

So, I arrived offshore on the FPSO, after flying for more then 30 minutes over the ocean in a helicopter. I am currently the only female of the 42 people on board and I get my own room, which is great. The room itself is a pretty good size, for being on a boat. There is a bunk bed, couch, cupboard, big TV (I think it is actually a 48" flat screen, we don't even have a tv that nice at home), a window that looks out over the ocean (very small but still there), and an en-suite bathroom with shower.

Life on board the ship is really not too bad. We get up just before 6 so we can have breakfast and be at the morning meeting by 6:30. Then we work, and there is a snack at 9, lunch at 12, a snack at 3, dinner at 6, and a snack at 9; and no dishes to do, plus the food is actually really good. Most of the guys here work shift work, there is both a day and a night crew who each work 12 hours (6:30 to 6:30). Once they are done there is a large lounge room with big TVs (bigger than the one in my room) and gaming systems. There is also a decent gym on the bottom floor as well as every room has an internet connection and a phone. If you have laundry you put it outside your room at night and it is at your door in the morning, clean and ready to go. This all sounds great except that is all you get for three weeks if you are a shift worker out here and there is really no where else to go except the cafeteria, lounge, gym or your room.

The first day I arrived the waves decided to go one way with the wind in another direction, making the boat sway in a very unpleasant way. I did manage to keep down all of my food but spent most of the day thinking about letting it out. That night the swells got worse. My bed is parallel to the length of the boat and the swell was causing us to rock sideways rather than for and aft (marine jargon for forward and backward) which meant that all night I rocked back and forth in my bed, enough so that I had to brace myself to keep from sliding back and forth. Needless to say, I didn't sleep much.

I spent four nights on the boat and then headed to the WHP. The WHP was very different from the boat. When I first arrived on the ship I think I felt like it was pretty cramped and close and not much freedom, that was nothing compared to the WHP. The original plan was that the WHP would not normally have people on it, the operation would be run from the boat and only the occasional maintenance person would be there. They are currently at maximum capacity. There are 30 beds and normally have 30 people, when I was there the head count was 29. I had to share a room with the guy who was in charge of all the work going on, I didn't see him at all though so it really didn't matter.

The rooms there still have an en-suite bathroom but you have to share it. The cafeteria doesn't have enough seats for everyone so we had to eat in shifts. The only phones are communal and in the middle of the lounge area (the lounge area consists of a couch beside the cafeteria). Once outside the accommodation the total area is maybe 75 ft by 75 ft, at most. I cannot imagine spending three weeks at a time out there.

When you walk down to bottom deck, you are standing on metal grating that you can see through, and there is nothing below you but ocean, ~ 60ft down, crazy. I liked just standing there and looking down, it was pretty impressive. We had some pretty good wind while I was there so I spent a bit of time just watching the waves crashing against the structure. Those same waves were making the whole platform move, not in a regular back and forth motion, more of a circular motion but inconsistent.

After spending 24 hours on the WHP I headed back to the FPSO for one more night before heading home. As I mentioned at the beginning, once I got home it took almost 2 full days before I felt normal on solid ground.

I had some difficulty putting photos in with the post so I decided to stick them in a separate post. Anyone with tips on adding pictures to the post let me know.

I hope everyone is doing well. Keep watching for some pictures from Ted's helicopter field work on Mt Doom.

Ted's Arrival and Meg's Offshore Training

I guess it is about time I posted an update with our recent adventures. Ted arrived safely the last week of February. His thesis is officially submitted. He spent a few days getting used to Wellington, setting up a bank account, getting a tax number, and a cell phone; as well as enjoying some much earned time off. It was nice that I work down town because he was able to meet me for lunch and walk me to/from work. On the Sunday after he arrived I went to New Plymouth, on the western part of the North Island, for offshore training. Ted was able to watch the big hockey game on the Monday morning before heading off to Turangi to start some field work (which will be the subject of the next post, hopefully with photos). I hear the hockey game was awesome but didn't get to watch it myself, gotta love Crosby though, good ol' Nova Scotia.

The training I was doing was to prepare me for life offshore and provide me with the knowledge to be able to handle offshore emergencies. Since we are a lot farther from medical facilities and emergency response we each have to be able to provide the first response to incidents; things like first aid, fire fighting, etc. Also, since you cannot run away from the scene of an incident it is much more important that you know how to escape and then survive to be resuced from the water. They taught us how to actually jump off a platform and what to do when you get into the water, how to get into a life raft from the water (which is surprisingly hard to do), and what survival equipment is in the life raft. We put on survival suits (basically full body coveralls with flotation, and then jump off a 3m platform into a pool, swim to a life raft and get in. It was pretty fun.

The second day was all about helicopter accidents. We take a helicopter over water for 120 km to get out to the installation so they want to make sure we are prepared in case it goes down over teh water. They put us back in our water survival suits and got us buckled into a fake helicopter and then proceeded to sink it in the pool. We had to count to 7 and then attempt to get out. Each time they made it a little harder. We did three dunkings with the helicopter upright and then 3 more where the helicopter flipped over. I don't know that I would say it was fun but definitely interesting.

The thirdy day was spent learning basic first aid, fire fighting and escape from a smoke filled building. For any of you Office watchers I had a really hard time not thinking about the episode where they were doing first aid, after Stanley's heart attack. Apparently you really are supposed to pump a persons chest to the tune of Staying Alive. Luckily no one cut the face off the dumby though. The fire fighting part was interesting, you had to put out a bunch of different fires using the different types of fire extinguishers. I think it was good to actually get to use a fire extinguisher, it is a lot different than you think it will be. It isn't as simple as point and shoot.

The course was three days and I was glad when it was over. It was fun, but there was always a bit of tension each day because you were being asked to do something slightly beyond what you wanted to do, like the 6 dunkings in the helicopter and having to walk right up to a fire and put a fire blanket over it.

Someone from the course took photos of us by the pool so once I get those I will try to put some up here.

Meg

Last Day of Unemployment

Well, tomorrow I start work for OMV New Zealand. I am excited that not only do I get to wake up at 7, rather than 5:30, but the 20 minute walk to work goes along the ocean. No more 45 minute drive.

My first week in New Zealand has gone pretty well. It was great weather, over 20 C everyday and no rain. There was a big 7 aside rugby tournament in town this weekend and apparently the Kiwis go crazy for this tournament. Everyone dresses up in costumes from cookie monster, to Indians, to pretty much anything else you can imagine. Often groups of people dress as the same thing. Some of them aren't even going to watch the rugby they are just here to party.

Yesterday, I headed North East, over the hill from Wellington into Martinborough. It is one of the famous wine making areas. We went to a bunch of wineries and did some wine testing. The valley where Matrinborough is, the Wairarapa, reminds me of the Valley in Nova Scotia only it is wider. The weather seemed to be similar (hot and drier than on the coast) and it even smelled the same.

Today I started looking at houses. I drove around with Ted's friend Graham, just getting an idea of what each of the neighboorhoods is like. Wellington is a hilly city and the hills in some areas are really steep. Depending on what part of the hill your house is on you may only see a very small amount of sun during the day. The New Zealanders seem to think that they live in a tropical area so houses generally aren't insulated and don't have central heating. Therefore, it is important to make sure that your house sees enough sun that you don't have to spend too much on heating and it isn't really damp. This makes things more difficult. There are some pretty fantastic views from some houses though. I am confident we will find a nice place it will just take some time to figure it all out.

Meg's Arrival in New Zealand

After 3 uneventful flights, a total of almost 16 hours of flying, I have arrvied in Wellington NZ. I arrived at 9 in the morning to a beautiful sunny day with a temperature over 20 C. I spent the first day with friend of Ted's, Graham. He moved to NZ from Canada last year so he knows all the things we need to do. I managed to get a cell phone, a bank account and a tax number with no issues. It is nice that even though we are in a different country they speak the same language.

As I don't start work until Monday I spent the week getting unpacked and figuring out the city a bit. It is a great city, lots of cafe's and pubs and it is right on the ocean. I have gone for two runs and totally killed myself both times. There are lots of very steep hills here that can't be avoided if you want to run for more than 10 minutes. I am not used to that after living in Edmonton. The views from the tops of the hills are gorgeous though.

I had my first experience driving on the other side of the road today. It went pretty well, and wasn't as weird as I thought it would be. It will take some time getting used to sitting on the right hand side of the car, I keep looking for drivers on the other side.

I am struggling to accept that fact that it is summer here, I keep wearing long pants and taking a swearter and then being really hot. I already have a sunburn. I think I am going to try and fully enjoy it today though, by heading to the beach.

I guess that is all for now. I will try to put some pictures up here next time and will try to post somewhat frequently so you guys can see what we are up to.