The adventures to the archery range in Houston.

Long lost friends - I hadn't seen my friends from Alaska since I left Alaska and now here we are meeting up in Houston - who would have ever guessed that!

Peter and I in the lake near Asker. This is the lake that I can easily walk to from work and where I live.

A Clerk?

Getting off the boat all I wanted to do was walk. I wanted to go further than 82 meters in one direction. And that is exactly what I did. The very first day off the boat I dragged 4 friends along and walked a few km down to the fjords for a picnic. The next day 3 of us walked all over Oslo for this food fest (and tried whale along the way, plus a lot of reindeer and Norwegian brown cheese). That night I walked over to the lake to camp out, and back the next day. Then after work I walked to the lake again go swimming. This is why I love where I work in Norway. After work, I walked home, changed clothes, and walked about 30 minutes over to the lake. The walk takes you through town, up along the road past this old church, past the prince’s house, then down along some farm fields before coming out at the lake. Cliffy hills surround the lake. Fabulous.

I can’t say the same for here in Houston. From work I can walk along some highways. So I’ve had to find other endeavors besides walking. I’ve been finding other random stuff to do or having other random encounters. One guy from work is really into Mongolian horseback archery. He’s rounded a few of us up from work and taken us off to this shooting range to practice. It’s an interesting mix of bows – the ones they use for the Olympics to compounds for hunting. You can shoot at targets, at fake deers, or fake hogs. Its fun.

Where I am staying they have wine, cheese and some small appetizer every night. One night I was down there and an older man was waiting for the wine so I offered to pour it for him. He started joking about having a nice pretty young girl pour him wine, so I started joking about that. As we were leaving he apologized or said he was sorry for bantering about that. I said, oh its no big deal, I work off shore and have to do this banter all the time. He turned and said “oh are you a clerk?” I repeated it, “a clerk? Nope, I’m out there doing the work”. I’m not sure he totally believed me, but he was shocked none-the-less. Nope. Not a clerk.

This is how we celebrated Norwegian national day on board (note my very blue tongue and my color appropriate outfit)

This is Emerald probably around 3 am or so. I got pretty excited taking early morning pictures.

This was around 12:45am on the back deck.

Communities and Decisions

it's been way too long, I know, but after the first week I tried not to turn on my computer after work (since I was sitting in front of one for most of work). Instead I ended up playing lots of foosball, working out in the gym, and doing lots of QHSE stuff for the boat. Now I'm back on land, but I'm actually missing the boat. part of it is the community. Below is an exerpt from my journal from a few weeks ago.

It’s really cool how you learn some of life’s basic lessons here on the boat. Kind of like in the wilderness, life is broken down into the basics. Here on board, you have one sole purpose in life and that is to get seismic data. Perhaps the people in the office and I work for the same company, with ultimately the same goal, however, their daily life is not one purpose. They are working on several projects – some people with marine, some with land, some are finance people. They go home at the end of the day, may see people different from work (although perhaps not), they have a life outside of work. But while they all have the “same goal” they are working on it in very unrelated ways. However, here on the boat, the goal is very tangible and it is the same for all of us – how do we shoot seismic, to get the best data and get it fast? Therefore decision making is very different, and more urgent than say in the office. It requires both a single person as well as the group.

Today we realized how poorly ballasted some of the streamers were. And we couldn’t go into production until we fixed it – 8 couldn’t stay at 8 meters, 6 was a roller coaster, and 1 was barely any better. Good thing 1 and 8 are on the outside (just kidding – this is not good). We had 2 options – 1. Go out in the work boat, and ballast by filling with kerosene, all of cable 1, 6, and 8. Or recover all the cables. The work boat option would take 1 day, well one full (24 hours) in the work boat, plus we can only go out in 1 boat due to limited dry suits / survival gear. While recovering and then deploying the cables is estimated to take 6 days. Why not the work boat? The seas are rough and expected to get worse on Sunday (today is Friday). Not sure if we will ever get a window. It came down to an impromptu meeting with most of acquisition, nav, and gunners there, plus Keith. Keith was very good natured about it. Everyone offered their advice and ultimately it came down to Ernie saying what he thought was best. People setting timelines, and then questioning them and determining a new one. First we decided on what was most important if the workboat were to go out. Then we thought – what if we recovered the streamers, then we set a deadline of 3pm – if no weather window, then retrieve. Then we asked, why not start retrieving now and save those 6 hours?

It was cool, because I think in some way everyone felt a part of the process, and everyone agreed with the decision.

I think the cool part as well is that a decision was made – it wasn’t just suggestions that no one will ever act on. We had to make a decision right there and then.

So the last 4 hours it was out on the backdeck again recovering.

Yes it is Winter

Today it was rough and much more like what I expected from the Barent’s Sea. The swell was up to 5 meters (over 15 ft), and the wind was averaging about 25 knots. The temperature without the windchill was hovering just above freezing. Plus a lot of out work was on the boat deck, which is high and fully exposed.

I thought this was a good picture, of me the boat, and the mountains in the background. I've got at least 3 or 4 layers on underneath my coveralls!

2 days ago it was cold, but clear and you could see the new snow on the mountains in the distance.

If you click on this picture and look closely enough, you can see the snow from this morning. This is a view off the back deck - that thing going diagonally across is one of our cables that we were deploying.

Summer or Winter?

First before starting I must note that 2 days ago my Swedish phrase of the day was Sommaren är här, which means the summer is here. How ironic given this morning’s snow.

I was hoping to equate my experience this far in the Barent’s Sea (North of the North sea off of Norway) to the TV show “Deadliest Catch”, however its only half been that way. On the supply boat that we took out last Tuesday it was rocking and rolling, big time. Then yesterday I went out on the work boat (think small motor boat) and I got sick. I have always prided myself on not getting sick, but this was bad. At one point I was sitting and trying to look at the ocean and I couldn’t focus, so my eyes kind of glazed over until I fell asleep. Then I managed to throw up twice. We left around 4am and got back at 9:30 am - those were 5 ½ very long hours. However, then I started to think, why? Because I had also felt a bit queasy on the supply vessel coming over. And there was one link – both days I had eaten an apple, not too long before feeling queasy.

Today around 6:30am the weather got calm enough to go out and I was put in the crew – 4 people usually go out. I was both excited (I hadn’t eaten an apple and wanted to test my theory) and horrified at the same time – what if it wasn’t the apple. So we donned our dry suits and off we went and it was great! No problems, no falling asleep, and beautiful sun.

Ah, and did I mention that it snowed this morning around 4 am while we were working on the back deck? Most of the days the temperature has been hovering around freezing, with the wind blowing and dropping the temperatures even further. And all we’ve been doing since getting on board is backdeck work, so I’ve been out side constantly. Luckily, I put on a lot of clothes under my coveralls.

And yes, it is not dark here. I am working the “night” shift from midnight to noon, but I have renamed it the midnight sun shift.

Rasmus is proving that his home town is indeed not flat, but rather böljande landskap (rolling landscape).

The Easter Parade in downtown Ystad. All of the little kids are dressed up like witches.

Jantelagen and Påsk

Small differences are interesting. Living in Vietnam, the differences between my life in the US and lives in Vietnam stood in stark contrast. Food carts at every corner and people squatting on the street waiting for a bus (very difficult actually) are hard to miss. Spending the past 2 months in Scandinavia, life is much closer to life in the US, but it is the little things that are interesting.

In Norway, my 2 closest friends are 2 Swedish guys from work, Peter and Rasmus. They have been filling me in on the nuanced differences between Scandinavia and the US. I also got to spend Easter at Rasmus’ house in Ystad, Sweden, giving me a chance to live with his family and really see and discuss differences. Jantelagen, is what I find most interesting. Lagen means law, and from my understanding, it is this sense among everyone not to be too proud or too ahead of the pack. Rather the desire is for everyone to be together. No need for one person to rise proudly from the rest and display it. This I thought stood in stark contrast to what we do in America. We proudly display our awards, our trophies, our achievements. I was telling Peter and Rasmus one day about how I had a Spelling Bee for my students in Vietnam. They said that a Spelling Bee would not happen in Sweden – pitting one student against another? Only to have one winner? I have since bought “Spellbound” to bring back to Norway next week. (Spellbound is a documentary about the Spelling Bee, which if you haven’t seen, you really should). One night in Sweden, I started watching the movie the Devil Wears Prada (I say start, because I fell asleep half way). However, after all this talk about jantelagen, the first scene was very striking. A fresh college graduate goes into a NY magazine to get a job. And as they hesitate to offer the job she starts “Well I was editor of my school newspaper for 2 years and a reporter for all 4 years. I won the outstanding thesis award and I started the….” And she kept going. This scene would not have happened in Sweden. I’ve been thinking a lot if this is a good or bad trait of Americans. I can’t decide, nor do I think its clear cut. There is something to be said for humility, but there is also something to be said for putting yourself out there and really pushing your self – your thoughts? There is an interesting entry about Jantelagen in wikipedia.

I love to see how others countries celebrate holidays and this was no exception. In Sweden (or at least in Ystad, since that is the only place I was) herring, herring, and more herring was the norm. The Swedes also have a tradition surrounding Easter witches. Children will dress up as witches on Maundy Thursday and go around to houses for sweets, which they call Påskkärringar. However, don’t think witches as in green ugly faces and black hats. Rather think aprons and skirts, girls with red rosy cheeks and colorful scarves on their heads.

Finally I was introduced to MyMaps on google. You can click the link here and see where I went in Scandinavia. The cool part is that I have also included photos, so when you click on the locations, you will also see a photo a description of that place (almost all of them have a picture). Let me know what you think.

One of the first ski jumpers of the day, it may even have been a test / trial jumper.

Me and my 2 Swedish friends Rasmus and Peter - at the end of a cold day watching backhoppning

The final score. Note that the American is 58 out of 59. The other guy messed up pretty badly on style.

Heie Heie Heie

Despite numerous suspicions that I don’t actually work, I do. Okay, I don’t actually work, I’m just getting paid to learn right now. I’m in my 5th week now of START school, and life is actually taking the form of a “normal” life. I realized that these 8 weeks in Norway are the longest that I have been anywhere since I left Vietnam last June. I have a regular “work week”. I go to school at the Oslo Training Center which is in the same building as the Schlumberger / WesternGeco Oslo Technology Center, where they think up all the new technology to keep WesternGeco ahead of everyone else.

I’ve been learning a lot (a lot) about computers that is really useful no matter where I am. Unix and I are now much better friends, I understand networks, and I think I can set up, configure, run, and possibly even trouble shoot most of our software and hardware on board. This week we are focusing on our newest seismic technology, Q. It's special because using Q you can go back to reservoirs that are already in production, re-shoot seismic there, and monitor the well.

I also have exams every week, so I feel like Susan, my room mate from Princeton who is at medical school now and must take a massive exam every other week. I’m 100% sure her exams are much more difficult than mine, but I still spend a good part of Sunday studying (okay well not this past weekend, since it was my birthday, but hey).

Instead of studying this weekend I went to the world cup ski jumping event (backhoppning in Swedish). The day started with a blue sky. It had snowed and sleeted the night before, so the run was too slow, so they had to postpone the initial combined event and put chemicals on the jump. I realized that this was my first international sporting event that I had ever been to. The real event started though with a large marching band at the very top of the slope. I was just waiting for one of the band members to slip. Then skiers with each represented country’s flag skied down the slope and then it was time to start. The skiers jump from those with the worst standings to those with the best. Therefore, the American jumped first. I kid you not, after he jumped and landed everyone laughed because it was such a short jump. However soon I was surrounded by Norwegians shouting “heie heie heie” (cheer cheer cheer) and ringing their cow bells and Poles shouting “lec lec” (fly fly). Poles dominated the audience, because the current best ski jumper is a polish guy. Unfortunately he was last to jump and by that point the winds had picked up and he did pretty badly, which led to the canceling of the last round. A really cool way to spend my birthday weekend though.