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