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