Base Loaded, 22 Nov – 4 Dec 2011

We started off our base training, checklist in hand, with the various safety inductions and facility familiarizations that everybody must participate in immediately. We were also finding more and more that speaking English was a greater rarity up here. When given our safety talk by the base manager, he had to call in another guy to translate. The guy who came to translate, Anton, seems to be the only guy who consistently smiles around here (besides me, of course), which doesn’t make for the happiest of environments, but have you met anyone who ever came out and actually claimed the Siberian Arctic was fun? I obviously have to change the overall tone, one smile at a time. But I digress. Nearly everyone who we would talk with throughout our base training would preface every conversation with an apology for their English. I would always remind them that it’s still probably better than our Russian. They at least knew all the tool names and procedures in broken English, which is all we really needed, although most Q&A’s were all but useless.

We were placed for the time being in the Surface Lab, the area in charge of maintenance of all sensors and hardware that wasn’t the actual downhole tool equipment. Here we would learn firsthand about all the surface systems by testing, calibrating, assembling, and disassembling them. Initially, the work was painstakingly tedious, checking the continuity and insulation of various cables, but then we got up into more interesting things, like wiring hardware, assembling sensors, setting up the rig site satellite communication system, and basically everything we’d be in charge of knowing out in the field, as combination engineers/technicians.

One of the lab workers, a cute blonde girl (and possibly the only one on the base at that point, because ALL the men would come by and flirt with her), always had music playing. This music consisted mostly of techno remixes of popular American songs, notably Lady Gaga. Of course, I would sing along to this stuff in my customary falsetto. This usually incited more of the standard giggly Russian girl reactions, though I felt they were more positive than the ones I had received in my shopping excursions. She was, up to that point, one of the easiest Russians to speak with, mostly because she was enthusiastic about knowing English better, and she was impressed that I had figured out how to read Russian Cyrillic. It really isn’t that hard, once you know the sound every character makes. It’s super phonetic in that way. She thought it was funny that I could read it without knowing what it meant. But I find many languages actually have consistent enough pronunciation rules to be able to read stuff, despite not knowing its meaning (French, Spanish, Portuguese…), with the big exception being English. Silly English, where all of our rules have several exceptions. Her favorite word that didn’t make sense was “through.” I wasn’t about to tell her about all the other ways “-ough” can end up sounding in English.

Jeff and I, the little perverts we are, started having some unintentional innuendo fun with the language stuff, to make things more enjoyable. Our lab mentor, as I will now refer to her, pronounced the word, “important” like “impotent.” I don’t blame her. I rarely get the proper syllabic stresses in Russian words on the first try, but I’d always smile when she’d explain how “impotent” a certain action or device was. There was also a moment when, after being shown how to assemble something, she then asked both of us with a smile, “Want to screw?” If she hadn’t been handing me a screwdriver at that moment, I might’ve said something I shouldn’t. Jeff and I both discussed it with big smiles on our faces later. We were both starting to feel the effects of being in a very male-dominated environment, away from any sort of dating or whatever, and it was starting to take its toll on our conversation topics, which turned more and more to discussions about women. It made me wonder at what point I’d get my first vacation back to the US.

It also doesn’t help that this whole industry is filled with innuendo, as far as the terms go. Some of my favorite industry standards: “Rate of Penetration,” “Stick-up,” “Nut Plug,” and “Pull-out-of-hole.” Ok, I’m sorry. But I’m a guy!

Our first Thursday on the base was American Thanksgiving. People from home asked if I would be celebrating it in Russia. There is no Thanksgiving in Russia. Russians will celebrate it in the US, thankful that they are no longer in Russia. But it just doesn’t happen here. Luckily, I wasn’t heartbroken. I’ve never thought too highly about Thanksgiving, other than the four-day weekend from school. Since I was no longer in school and I was now working seven days a week, why think about a weekend? I just had to not get distracted by all my asshole friends on Facebook reveling in their excitement about the holiday. I hate to be a Debby Downer about Thanksgiving, but seriously, I’ve always thought traditional Thanksgiving food was sub-par (as far as type of food is concerned, not quality of preparation), except for dessert. I love pumpkin pie and everything that comes with it. But turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, etc. I don’t consider gourmet dining. My ideal Thanksgiving would consist of Thai food. That’s something for which I ALWAYS give thanks when I eat it. Just ask the employees at the restaurant “No Thai!” in Ann Arbor, a block from my house on Catherine Street last year. They saw me all the time, and I was always grateful.

For lunch that day, though, Jeff decided to get as close to Thanksgiving-like as he could, and he ordered chicken and potatoes. They happened to also have some cranberry-like juice, so he basically had all the mainstays except for stuffing and pumpkin pie. He kept wondering if they had turkey, but last time I checked, turkey was a North American native, and it was asking too much of Siberia to hope for anything other than chicken. But anyway, here’s what the meal looked like.

I think I had liver or something instead. They prepare their liver well here.

Everybody on the base had to go to a standing meeting in the workshop that evening. The maintenance manager carried on in both English and Russian, but the man talks so softly, I don’t even think that Russians who were more than 10 feet away from him could even understand him. The tone of his voice was so disinterested-sounded that it was difficult to tell whether he actually cared about what he was talking about. Our lab mentor made a comment to him at the end of his monologue, something to the effect of explaining that it was Thanksgiving in America. He looked over at Jeff and me, the only Americans in the room, and said, in a long, drawn-out, very sarcastic-sounding way, “Congratulations.” Everybody, including me, chuckled, and then he said, “We don’t have that in Russia.”

I said, “I know. That’s okay,” and went on my merry way.

A cute and unexpected surprise that would greet us to and from meals on several occasions was this Russian Polar Bear…

His name is Белый, pronounced kind of like “beel-y,” which is Russian for “white.” He always was looking for food or warmth, and he was in the habit of following Jeff and me back to the Surface Lab.

Apparently someone on another company’s base owned him, but I guess we just treated him really well on our side.

I’ve also noticed something negative (in my opinion) about Russian girls compared to American girls. Sure, they are on the whole quite attractive, and they dress well, but I’ve noticed that they are just physically really weak. Maybe it’s just the ones I’ve encountered, but I feel like American girls are definitely better at lifting things. This became apparent when I’d be asked to move certain items that a girl had to push and drag really hard across the floor (she didn’t even look like someone I’d consider "weak"), and then I’d lift it and realize it’s not all that heavy. Plenty of American girls I know would not have a problem carrying it. Maybe here they’re just always used to men being more chivalrous and doing the heavy lifting for them; maybe they didn’t get enough of the proper nutrients growing up; and/or maybe they might not be of that independent American woman mindset of, “I can do this myself. I don’t need a man.” I have thus determined that I like that about American women. I like that they can be strong and kick some ass. As long as they’re not stronger than I am. :-) That's not to say I won't help a girl out if she needs some heavy lifting done. I'm just saying a like strong(er) women.


I hope that last paragraph didn't just make me look like too much of an asshole, but I think this is just another example of one of my "Fun Observations Upon Which I've Drawn Hasty Generalizations that I Don't Necessarily Believe Completely."

I was somewhat disappointed to also learn that I would not be back in America for any portion of the holidays. I had heard from various higher-ups in various positions (not my own manager, who was on vacation) that we would be able to take a vacation home around New Year’s time. I also saw on my scheduling that I was set to leave Vankor at about December 28^th. I figured, “Hey cool, I get to go home a couple weeks at that point.” It made sense to me to get a break at that point, because after that, I’d have another month before ENG-1 and then nine weeks of ENG-1 without a break. But my manager came back from vacation and shot me down. I do get a break, but I have to stay in Krasnoyarsk. He suggested going skiing. But unfortunately I’m a bit of a skiing snob and the Krasnoyarsk skiing resort only has about 1000 vertical feet, which won’t do it for me, especially since the last place I went skiing was here.

Sickle Couloir (left side strip of snow) on Horstman Peak, Sawtooth Range, Idaho

Oh well, this just means I get nearly a month of vacation from Mid-April onward. On this first trip, I will be hitting up a few locations in the US. After this, though, my breaks are going to span the whole world. There are so many places to go on my list… Japan, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Machu Picchu, skiing in the Alps and the Canadian Rockies and even Sochi where the 2014 Winter Olympics will be held, climbing mountains on every continent… to name just a few. But I need a hamburger of the size and juicyness that only an American joint can offer. The borsch here is good, but man, I was thinking about the double major burger from Quickie Burger in Ann Arbor, or anything from Big Jud’s (which I stupidly didn’t manage to make it to before leaving Boise, grrrrrr), or …. Okay I have to stop because I’m suddenly starving. Time to go eat something.

Hardcore in Vankor!! 21 November 2011

This is unacceptable, I know. Over three weeks without posting. So I’m not so good at this blogging thing. Or perhaps I just have stuff to do. I guess it’s just lower on my priority list than learning my job, learning Russian, keeping up with US pop culture and politics (one of my pre-expat promises to myself), and exercising. I thought I would be better at posting a lot of short things often, but my inability to take an observation/experience and say, “Oh yeah! I’d better blog about it now!” keeps hindering me.

I’ll have you know, though, that in my absence from the blogosphere I have in fact managed to be quite productive. I’ve completed all the online coursework required of me to complete “pre-school” and I still have more than two months until my ENG-1 school starts in mid-February. I also have been getting used to life on a rig in the arctic, where internet pages load at dial-up speed, among other things. And, I’m trying to memorize and retain at least 100 new Russian words a week. That’s not too lofty of a goal is it? More on my other “things-to-accomplish-while-secluded-in-the-middle-of-nowhere” later…

So, on the 21^st of November, we (Jeff and I) woke up bright and early to catch our cab to the airport. Because of our Russian deficiencies and our never having chartered to a rig before, we were joined up with a Russian technician, Ilgiz, who would lead us through all the tough spots. He was in the cab that picked us up and he pretty much made our always-hectic experience bearable.

There’s something about trunk space in the cars in Russia that makes me feel like I pack too heavily. I even left my large duffle in the apartment and was down to just my backpacking pack and laptop bag, but the cab driver had to work hard to stuff our belongings in the small hatchback of the car (not as embarrassing as the cab ride when we arrived in Krasnoyarsk, when my large duffle had to sit by itself in the front seat). I’ve definitely learned my lesson and will be eschewing my large duffle for something much smaller (or nothing at all) upon my return to the US. I’ll probably get a nice shoulder-strap kind of bag that would basically be a large laptop bag with room for more stuff. The backpacks we got to carry our laptops don’t have enough space for much more than the laptop and some papers, and I carry it in my hand anyway, because I already have a backpack. That just about covers the packing topic

So, anyway, we got to the airport, Cheremshanka, which is different than Krasnoyarsk’s main airport, Yemilyenova. It might as well be the same airport, because it happens to be right next door. But Cheremshanka just handles the little planes, and we of course are riding a charter flight on a prop plane. Woohoo! There’s something about aging prop planes that makes me just want to jump out of a plane without a parachute, because I might fare better that way. But seriously, these are Antonov 24’s and they are the ol’ Russkij Standard. It’s like taking a Greyhound bus in the air.

There were about five separate charter flights taking off to Vankor this morning, and Ilgiz thankfully was there to let us know when our flight had been called to board. As had become standard in the non-metropolis cities, upon going through security, the “concourse” was just a waiting room, and these waiting rooms have become increasingly smaller. Security, I think, was also just a formality here. Since this wasn’t a commercial airline flight, and we were all just going to work, I don’t think it really mattered what we brought with us, as long as they would allow it into Vankor. Everyone in the waiting room, save for one tall pretty woman in a mini skirt and high-heeled boots (presumably someone with a desk job, but you never know…), was a tired-looking man. Nobody seemed excited to be ending their days off and heading back to the arctic to spend the end of the year. I wondered why... I, for one, was giddy as a schoolgirl.

It’s the little things in life—like going further north than you’ve ever gone (nearly 70°), or riding in a helicopter for the first time—that really make it special. Even though the journey was probably going to be a logistical drag, as most things are out here, I was looking forward to some special experiences. When they called our flight, I excitedly tried to be the first person on the bus, not that it mattered, really. We sped along, down the tarmac, and came upon a real beauty.

Not the actual plane (it was slightly less perfect looking). I think this is just a plastic miniature...  But the type is the important thing!

The baggage system was pretty simple: wait in line and then toss yours into the behind-the-cockpit cargo area. Then we had to walk around and board the plane from the back. Still failing at being pushy and shovy (I’m going to make it a real word, damnit!) in these Russian lines, I was one of the last to get my bag into cargo and board the plan. So of course I got to sit at the back. That gave me a great view of the plane as a whole, and from the inside, save for the round windows, it really did look like a Greyhound bus. The windows were perfect circles, instead of the modern ellipsoid, and they were complete with little curtains instead of the standard sliding cover. The overhead storage spaces, like a bus, were open-shelf-like instead of shut-able bins. I knew this was going to be a good time. At least our stewardess was attractive, which has also been a pretty consistent Russian standard.

The window was pretty scraped up, so it was difficult to get any good pictures looking out, but I would soon find out that it wouldn’t matter, since the normal view out of the plane was either the white snow or the white clouds. Here we are getting ready to take off. For a moment it seemed as if our engines weren’t going to work properly and that they needed to be manually jumped.

I don't think that cord will be long enough....

When the plane set off down the runway, I was confused because I figured it probably needed to go faster to actually lift off, even though it was a prop plane and all. Jeff, too, was slightly confused, having served for 4 years in the Air Force and knowing a thing or two about flying. I wondered if the engines really were broken and couldn't operate at full capacity. We slowed down at the end of the runway, luckily, and then the plane did a U-turn. As it turned out, there just weren't any taxiways, so we had to taxi down the runway in one direction to take off in the other. Then the propellers really went wild, and we actually gained significant speed and took off.

Hey, look! The Arctic!

Like I said, there wasn’t much to look at below us for the 2 to 3 hour flight. It was white, and there were a lot of frozen bodies of water, suggesting that this huge area was all just muddy marshland in the summer time. That’ll be annoying and buggy, come June, or whenever their “summer” starts here. Our in-flight meal consisted of a good-sized container of pâté with not enough things on which to spread it. I like pâté, but I wasn’t about to eat it plain, so I ended up just wasting half the container after exhausting the various bread and cracker resources on my food tray. Jeff didn’t even eat his once I told him it was liver. At least there’s no fear of going hungry when flying in Russia.

I tried to sleep for most of the flight, because I hadn’t really slept the last night. But before I knew it, we were touching down on the snowy runways in Igarka. Igarka is the nearest town to Vankor Field (in Russia, 80 miles is "near"). It was once the site of a major gulag and the destination of a quickly-abandoned railroad-building attempt. It is now known as the main aerial access point to the area’s oil industry and for its award-winning permafrost museum. I fear I will never spend enough time in Igarka to get to see this museum. Upon deplaning, we were met by several people who split us up and escorted us to our helicopters, big orange ones. They looked sturdy enough...

Upon boarding the helicopter, I decided the look on the outside was just for show. If somebody had shown me pictures of the inside and outside of this helicopter side-by-side, I wouldn’t have believed they were the same vehicle. There was a bench against the left and right walls, along which we all--twenty of us--had to squeeze. I made the mistake of picking the end, thinking half my body what get some breathing room from this decision. Unfortunately, I spent the length of the flight struggling to stay in my seat. They squeezed the absolute maximum amount of people they could onto these choppers.

Looking back at our plane from the helicopter. That's the noontime sun up there.

The takeoff was another funny thing. It took awhile for the pilot to decide that he actually wanted to go, but then when he did, we did some moves I wasn't expecting. First we started to lift off vertically, which I expected, but then we came back down for a bit, unexpectedly. The chopper turned, facing down the airport runway, and then, like a plane, it began to speed forward along the ground, before lifting off diagonally as if it needed all that forward momentum to fly properly. Jeff also didn't recognize this as standard procedure. Of course, the US Air Force has been known to utilize slightly more advanced flight technology than what we saw here today. In Soviet Russia, procedure standardizes YOU!

So my first ever helicopter ride wasn’t all that exciting. I didn’t get to look out the window, because the bench faced inward and I didn’t feel like twisting my neck around every time I wanted to look out, so I leaned forward, putting my head in my lap, and tried to get some rest.

Two hours later, we landed at Vankor. The 2 pm sun was not very high, as I expected. I got my first taste of arctic “weather” when an unexpected approaching helicopter flew not more than twenty feet above my head and whipped up a bunch of snow into my face. That woke me up. We entered the little guard house, passing through security, where we had to have both a laptop pass and a personal pass, and then we found Ilgiz on the other side, who had been separated from us in between the plane and helicopters. He led us out to the company’s Mitsubishi truck that we would take to the base.

It turned out to be a rather long drive. Vankor is the largest oil field in East Siberia, and despite having only begun in 2008, the facilities were extensive. It was apparently one of the largest construction projects in all of Russia, and it was even important enough that Putin attended the groundbreaking ceremony. The field is 40 km long, and the speed limit on its roads is only about 40 kph, so it was slow-going, because our base was at a different end of the complex than the Rosneft/Vankorneft hotel-like building near the guardhouse and helipads. We passed rig after rig, each one giving off a mystifying gas flare. “This is it,” I told myself. Pipelines of all sizes lined and crossed over the road. Massive trucks with incredibly-sized tires for the purposes of transporting who-knows-what drove past along the road.  

We reached our base, and it was a pretty good-sized site. Most every building was a trailer, except for the main workshop area. This was going to be like Hollywood!!!! Except that I would not only live in a trailer, but I would work in a trailer too. We were directed to the DD (Directional Driller) Coordinator’s office (trailer) to receive our instructions on what to do next. We were handed our linens and told where our living unit was (the trailer right next door). We had to stay on the base to complete a specific amount of training requirements before being let loose to a rig (and another identical working unit (trailer) and living unit (trailer)). Ok, so living in a trailer isn’t all that bad except for A) whenever someone enters and leaves they slam the door shut, which shakes the whole thing and makes it impossible to fall asleep, and B) there’s no toilet, and the options are one of the three stalls of real toilets in the workshop building (one female seat, one male seat, and a urinal) or what I will cover in the next paragraph.

This is where I bring up toilet talk. Warning, the next image may scare you. Our other option was this thing, which was a hundred yard walk from the trailer:

It smells nastier than it looks. People tend to use these sh*tholes to smoke while they’re relieving themselves, apparently, because the smell of cigarette smoke hits you almost as strongly as that ripe sewage scent. It wouldn’t be that bad if it weren’t for that the smell seems to follow you on the way out. I would be fine with going in, breathing through my mouth for a little bit, and then GTFO, but the reason the smell is so bad is because it is literally in the air, attaching itself to the body the longer it’s in there. I actually appreciate the arctic wind for this, because I can open up my jacket, spread my arms, and hope that the smell will be carried away after exiting one of these. But I can’t help but feel like I smell like it later on, and I hope it’s just all in my head or that other people don’t end up smelling me too.

The solution, obviously, was to avoid the sh*thole. So, for number 2, I’d make the journey into the workshop building, where I had to don coveralls, hard hat, and safety glasses, but it was a small price to pay to not smell like Andy Dufresne probably did after his escape from Shawshank. And for number one, I would’ve been fine just going outside somewhere, but the Russians already gave me enough crap about my blatant disregard for excessively warm clothing, that the idea of getting caught out in the open with my manhood out would probably get me a stern talking-to. I didn’t feel like having one of those so early in my employment, so I adopted Jeff’s Air Force-tested method of peeing in a bottle. This was really only used at nighttime, to avoid the hassle of getting out of bed, and getting warm clothes on just to take a leak. And I always have to pee like a racehorse in the morning.

Later, at the rig, the only option was a sh*thole (a smaller one than in the picture, where people often missed (number 2 as well as 1)), and there were no water bottles provided, so I man up and do it the way God intended.

Okay, enough about poo. Back to our adventure!

We got our little tour of the base, and then we got to go pick up our personal supply of PPE (personal protective equipment). And damn, do I look good!!!

The parkas are so big and warm, I really don’t have to wear anything else. This was tested and proven during a few nighttime sh*thole trips (pre-bottle usage) in which I could be found trudging along through the snow in just my boots, shorts and a parka. The parka goes down to my knees, so I probably looked naked to any passersby. There was only one, and he said something to me in Russian before I ducked away to my trailer.

Then, we went to bed at a decent time, ready to wake up bright and early and get our base training on! 

To Office, To Office, To Learn about Drilling….Part Two!! 6 – 20 Nov 2011

The next 14 days, following our little tour of the city, we would spend in the same routine of going to the office at about 8 AM and leaving at 8 PM, trying to get ourselves in the rhythm of the 12 hour shifts we’ll be working on the rigs. Every day it was dark when we walked to work, and it was dark when we left. Discounting the lack of vitamin D, the routine is actually pretty easy once you stop taking the weekends off. No dreading waking up on Monday, and no sleeping in on the weekends to throw off the daily routine. It’s not like we didn’t have plenty to do. There is still an insane amount of coursework we have to get through in a limited time, and 12 hours a day is barely enough time to do it. We managed pretty well. The most difficult thing was just seeing friends’ updates on Facebook about how great their weekends were. That’s something I’ll have to get over throughout the next however-many years I’ll be working this job.

I shall now give a photo tour of semi-significant items from throughout the two weeks working in the Krasnoyarsk office. 

The Office:

Our office was in one of the taller buildings in the area (top center)

One of the views from the office

Another view from the office

I think we took a wrong turn at Omsk and ended up in Paris.... Either that or this had to be a really high-quality French restaurant.  We never ate there, but if they can afford to put up a scale replica of the Eiffel Tower, they must be doing ok.

Planeta: the largest mall east of the Urals. We heard there was a KFC in there, so we went. The KFC (and most of the other food court restaurants) sold beer. Some things about this country are just too great to pass up.

Ok, so I don't really have much in the way of any other photos dealing with Krasnoyarsk. Like I said, our routine was pretty much all about working. Wake up at around 7. Eat breakfast. Walk to work by 8. Work until at least 8. Walk home. Work out. Eat Dinner. Sleep. Repeat. This routine was only disturbed on the first night when we went looking for KFC for dinner and on nights we had to get groceries. Otherwise, it was EXACTLY THE SAME. We did meet an American family of missionaries at KFC. While chatting with Jeff in line, this little blonde girl in a purple dress kept trying to get her dad's attention: "Daddy! Daddy! Americans!" The man's name was Kevin and he works at a church down the road. He had been there for 15 years, and three of his five kids had been born in Russia. He gave me his card and it turns out they also provide English speaking lessons to Russians. Makes me kind of wish he could have also given me some decent Russian lessons for my two weeks there. I just didn't have any time for that.

Jeff and I were the only Americans in the office. Most there are Russians, with only a small few exceptions. The operations manager for East Siberia is Egyptian, but he's fluent in English and thus we count him as one of "our own," because he's not speaking another language to other people all the time. It does really help for focus to not be able to understand the majority of conversations around you. I'm a person who can easily be distracted  by some eavesdropping, so this was great for me.

A note about the Russian language. It is semi-impossible to get a good handle on it with Rosetta Stone. I stopped using Rosetta stone early on back in Tyumen (mostly because I didn't have time) and it just cannot get you the things you really want to know when you most need them, unless you've completed at least multiple levels of the course prior to arriving in your country. I have taken to just memorizing key vocabulary and sentences from a phrasebook, and I try to learn a new chunk of these every day. But it is still difficult to learn because the Russians who do know English will speak it and help us along. Someday, I'll be able to feel proficient. This is one of the reasons Angola would have been pretty cool--I already had a good handle on Portuguese, and my past experience with French and Spanish had strengthened that. I'm really excited to go to a romance language-speaking country, though, because after this I'm going to be full of confidence for the easier languages!

Next stop, Vankor Field!

To Office, To Office, To Learn about Drilling! 6 – 20 Nov 2011

Our first night in Krasnoyarsk, I slept like a baby. You know…waking up at all hours of the night and disturbing others. My “bed” was a fold-down futon-like apparatus with a major crack right down the middle. It would be a week before I realized there were linens in one of the living room cabinets. But hey, at least I had my own bedroom. Jeff was on the couch in the living room, which, he didn’t realize until two weeks later, was a hide-a-bed. Obviously, we weren’t really given too much info to work with, other than, “here are the keys to your apartment.” But that’s a good thing, right? It forces us to re-learn how to fend for ourselves after being provided for at the training center. This is the “real world,” after all.

Typical residential block. Apartments galore!

After I finally pulled myself out of bed at about noon on Sunday—the latest I had awakened since leaving the US—we took advantage of our one day off and decided to explore Krasnoyarsk. The lack of apartment internet spurred us to find an internet café. Jeff’s Lonely Planet Russia guide recommended a couple places, one of which was described us, “below the Playboy Club,” so we obviously we figured we would try that first. The map in the book had little to no real detail, so we asked a cab driver we found on the street. The place supposedly didn’t exist, according to his maps, so we chose the next place on the list, with a far less intriguing location. The driver dropped us off at the address on Mira Street, but there was no immediate indication of an internet club. I was trying to figure out where we were on the crappy guidebook map, so we walked awhile to reach a landmark (a stadium) to get our bearings. We ended up on Lenin Street, parallel to Mira, and decided just to walk down it and see what we might find.

We came across a downstairs café, called “English School,” and we rejoiced in the possibility that the employees might actually know English there (not to mention it advertised free Wi-fi). Sometimes, stumbling through poor Russian ordering can be mentally and emotionally taxing. Luckily, the cute waitresses usually just smile and giggle, and I pretend they think I’m a cute struggling foreigner and not just some bumbling fool. I’m an optimist. In the café foyer was a bulletin board with English advertisements for different tours and day trips, indicating that this place really does try to cater to an international crowd. The waitress did speak English, which actually made me more inclined to want to try some Russian with her (although she would still respond with English). I did my good deed for the day by teaching her the word “non-carbonated” for water with no gas. I ordered a steak, and it actually came out more steak-looking than any other thing called “steak” I’d seen so far. It was still pretty small, compared to American steaks, but it also was cheaper, so it’s ok. Good steaks in America are overpriced, anyway. The café also had a very well-done medieval theme. I’ve come to realize that they take theming very seriously here.

We got our fill of the internet, and we went on our merry way to find the big city park. Jeff had wanted to get a picture of a Lenin statue since arriving in the country. We didn’t see one in Moscow (though we saw his tomb), and we only ever drove past the one in Tyumen. But the one in Krasnoyarsk was supposed to be quite nice. So, off we went to find ol’ Vladimir. Sure enough, he was exactly where the map said he was (once we realized where we were on the map (a lot of cross streets just aren’t labeled and can throw you off for a few blocks)), in a large square in front of a big government building and adjacent to the city park.

Vlad and me

Next we explored the park. It is apparently common to have carnivals in the city parks. Our day in Moscow, they were just dismantling a portable roller coaster (it looked like the EuroStar, a portable inverted coaster), and in the city center of Tyumen, there was also a carnival area. That’s something pretty cool about Russia. Of course, the ride season is probably pretty short, but I wonder if they have any sort of good winter carnival celebrations. Ice slides come to mind. They were the 16^th and 17^th century Russian ancestors of the modern roller coaster—Russian Mountains, as they were called outside the country. In fact, the word for “roller coaster” in several languages is, literally, “Russian Mountain.” But I digress (thank you, Russia, by the way, for your probably-insane-at-the-time thrill-seeking efforts that led to such great developments in amusement attractions). But yes, there was a little roller coaster in this city park, but to my dismay it was already closed for the season. Eventually, I will ride a roller coaster in Russia, celebrating the roots of one of my original life obsessions and the reason why I chose to be a mechanical engineer.

There wasn’t much else of interest in the park besides a haunted house kind of attraction that may or may not have been open and had a hell of a statue out front.

In the US, this would probably scare the children. But in Russia, children scare statue!!

We then headed down Karl Marx Street. We decided to buy SIM cards for our phones that worked in the Krasnoyarsk region, and we went to the MTS store to attempt to buy the exact same plan we did in Tyumen, but apparently plans are different even across adjacent regions in this country, and as far as we could gather in our very comprehension-lacking conversation was that the card plan we bought in Tyumen wasn’t available here. I chose another plan I had read about on their website, and after laboriously figuring out what we were trying to achieve (much more giggling by the cute female employees) we paid for our plans and got the hell out of there. We would later find out that there was something wrong with our SIM card activations and we couldn’t make any calls with our Krasnoyarsk plans, despite having minutes available. Where’s Paul, with his more advanced Russian bartering skills, when you need him? The answer is Irkutsk.

After those difficulties, we decided to just get some food and find our way home. We figured we could walk back instead of taking a taxi. This city, despite its population of nearly a million, is relatively compact. And now that we actually knew where our apartment was in relation to the rest of the city, no longer a just a similar-looking building surrounded by other matching blocks of buildings, it would be pretty easy for us.

We walked into a mall, looking for a food court and a bathroom, and we found what we were looking for. The gender labels on the bathroom can be somewhat confusing. Same places merely have an upward pointing triangle or a downward pointing triangle. The upward one symbolizes a female (kind of dress-like) and the downward one symbolizes a male (big lat muscles). This goes against my previous symbological beliefs I gained from The Da Vinci Code, in which the female can be symbolized by a downward triangle (the womb, or the challis) and the man by an upward triangle. Don’t make this mistake! It also seems that passersby have a tendency to look at us and giggle, which happened multiple times in this one mall. It might be the matching laptop backpacks we both sported, along with the slight look of bewilderment of someone not entirely acquainted with his surroundings, which may have suggested silly missionaries or something. It may also be attributed to the fact that I almost walked into the women’s bathroom on accident, even after a woman walked out, thinking that she was actually in the wrong. But luckily I realized my error before crossing the threshold entirely. I don’t think anyone actually saw, nor do I think that led to the giggles we later received, but whatever. I’m just really growing accustomed to the Russian girl giggle.

We ate pizza in the food court. Again, there was mayonnaise on it. Still, it is unacceptable.

We left the mall and proceeded to walk the length of Lenin Street to get back en route to our apartment. We passed some museums dedicated to authors that came from Krasnoyarsk. The city was actually very arts-friendly back in the day. Anton Chekhov was also so bold as to declare it “the most beautiful city in Siberia.” Many of these museums used to be old log mansions of the former aristocrats of old. We also passed the Krasnoyarsk Philharmonic Concert Hall, which was a nice modern building (forgot to take a picture… oops). The rest of the walk back wasn’t all that eventful. There were some downed power lines just chilling on the sidewalk as we passed, which was a bit unnerving, but I’ve grown accustomed to things that seem slightly, um…. Off.

A park we walked through on the way home.

To be continued….

Krasno-who? Krasno-what? Krasnoyarsk! TJM-VKO-KJA, 4 - 5 Nov 2011

Friday the 4^th was a difficult day, because of course over the last three weeks we had all become da bestest friends in da whole wide world. But seriously, it always sucks saying good-bye to people you were just starting to really know (or starting to annoy, whichever is the stronger of the two).  Most of us shared parting beers at the sports center café, reminiscing of “old” times, or something like that.

It was hard to leave everybody and get to packing, but I hadn’t really started at all, and the way my clothes were strewn about, it seemed as if I had way more stuff than I had started with. That actually was true, because I had acquired a work laptop and its corresponding backpack. I decided that it was time to get rid of my old laptop, my dear, red Dell Inspiron 1520, whose operating system had been reinstalled on multiple occasions, and whose nearly every part had been replaced at one point or another. I had been gradually backing up the entirety of its contents to my external hard drive, just in case I really went through with its disposal. And I did. It kind of felt good. I’ll buy a tablet the next time I’m in the US, so I have something much more portable. I’ll be that guy with the laptop, tablet, AND Kindle. Sweet, huh? I guess the tablet kind of renders the Kindle useless, but the Kindle’s even more compact, so it may still be useful. I wouldn’t even bother with the tablet if it weren’t that I’m quite limited in my use of the work laptop for personal stuff. It doesn’t even have a webcam for Skyping. And I had expected to at least be able to Skype while abroad. Hence, I shall be tabletizing (if it’s not a word, it should be) in the near future.

I stayed up the whole night in order to pack. And by whole night, I mean until 5 am, when Jeff, Andrey, and I had to catch the bus to the airport. Andrey was only with us on the leg to Moscow, and then he was going off to his own location. Yes, you read correctly folks. Despite Tyumen being pretty much in the middle between Krasnoyarsk and Moscow, we had to fly to Moscow to catch a flight to Krasnoyarsk. And, I came to the realization that Moscow had a third apart: along with Sheremetyevo and Domodedovo, there is also Vnukovo, the hub of UTAir. UTAir is, for all intents and purposes, Russia’s version of Southwest. It is the budget airline.

The good part about Russian airlines is that they still serve meals on domestic flights. The bad part about this is having to deal with a big full food tray in front of you if you want to get anything else done. I guess it’s a small price to pay for nourishment. But seriously, the domestic meals might even be bigger than the meals on international flights of US-based carriers. Jealous yet?

The Tyumen airport’s main terminal was pretty crowded, it seemed. Like in Moscow, we had to go through a metal detector and x-ray just to enter the building. There were only three ticket lines working, but each one was designated for a specific flight. In order to pack as compactly as possible, I was wearing my slightly-too-tight winter boots and my ski jacket, which, coupled with the 50 pound duffle, the backpacking pack, and the laptop bag, and the intense heating of the terminal, made me overwhelmingly uncomfortable. It’s great that the Russian’s buildings are heated well and all, but they really don’t need to overdo it so much. It’s been true every place I’ve gone so far. I mean, once we walk inside from the cold, we have to immediately shed all our layers in order to not overheat. Sometimes, I just need wear some stuff so I don’t have to carry it. I then decided that I’m just going to have to suck it up and find a way for my body to stop heating up so much (destroy my metabolism?) and with that I will become a true Russian (-like) man. I’ve learned that the Russians’ bodies aren’t necessarily better able to withstand the cold, they’re just really good at wearing lots of warm clothes. Even earlier in my time in Tyumen, when I didn’t find it cold enough to warrant a hat, gloves, and big jacket, the Russians were already bundled up. They looked at me like I was crazy, but I didn't find it that bad. I also kind of wanted to condition my body a bit for what’s ahead. I might have to endure temperatures as low as -60°F when I go to my rig site.

So, after going through security, it turned out that the extent of the concourse was just a couple rooms. The lone bathroom was a little unisex single in the corner. Everybody exited through the same door to buses when their flight was called. People aren’t very polite about waiting in line here, either, so you always have to stroll up assertively and slightly aggressively to make sure you don’t get passed by about ten people in two seconds. So I squeezed in as the last person on the bus, and despite being the first one off the bus, I was quickly overtaken and ended up being at least the 20^th person to board the plane.  

The flight to Moscow was a nice two hour bit and the plane seemed somewhat roomy, despite being completely full. All was well, getting to Vnukovo. I expected Moscow’s third airport to be small and cramped or at least annoying in some way, but it was actually quite modern and spacious, and its only drawback was that everything was a depressing gray or black. It also turns out that when making a connection—even if it’s domestic—you once again have to go through security. They divide departure and arrival portions into two separate levels of the terminal. We said our good-byes to Andrey and headed through security for the third time that day.

I was starting to get sleepy from having not slept last night and I was starting to feel sick, so I was quick to pass out once we got on the plane. This plane was a bit more cramped than the last one, and the air conditioners above the seats spewed warmed air, which made it extra miserable. I can’t remember a flight that I had felt worse during, and it shouldn’t have been that way. But oh well, I blame the “sausages” from our breakfast meal on the previous flight.

After a difficult four hours, we landed in Krasnoyarsk, which is thankfully surrounded by rolling hills and some small mountains. I was getting depressed by the plains of Tyumen. We had an identical deplaning to Tyumen, with the same kind of bus and the same short ride along the tarmac to a small receiving terminal with one baggage claim room where they checked everyone’s luggage tag receipts against their tags for matches. Our taxi driver was waiting for us (I must note that I have yet to make an on-time arrival in Russia). We walked out into the Krasnoyarsk Saturday evening air, and it was above freezing. I had expected colder weather. When we left Moscow the pilot reported the temperature at our destination as below freezing. I don’t really like slushy puddles.

I was temporarily taken aback when the taxi driver got into the car on the right side. As it turns out, there’s a significant number of cars in Krasnoyarsk that are configured with the steering wheel on the right, despite driving on the right side of the road. As long as they still follow the driving-on-the-right-side rules, I guess I’m fine with it. I wonder if it’s because this far east they just get a lot of their cars directly from Japan, with their typical-for-island-nations-for-some-reason “wrong” side driving configurations. Hmmmm, I’ll see if I can look that up later.

We first had to stop by the office to get our keys to the company apartment we get to crash in before we head to the rig site. The office is in a 30-story office building. Not too shabby. It took the security awhile to figure out what we were there for, but luckily our manager just happened to still be working at 9 PM on a Saturday night, before heading out on vacation (People take big vacations in this job, because it’s so time and energy demanding. See “9 PM on a Saturday night.”). We finally got our keys and were whisked off to our apartment. After navigating narrow alleyway/parking lot/driveway/street things among the blocks of stereotypical “communist-style” apartment buildings, we came upon our building. I wasn’t sure exactly how we ended up there or if I was going to be able to find my way around later, with all these apartment buildings that looked the same, but I was just glad to be at a place where I could sleep. The apartment is nothing special, but hey we’re International Mobile employees who live out of suitcases. Who are we to expect luxury? At least I’ve got a place to sleep.

We did a short exploration and found a shopping center right across the street from our block. It had a grocery store and of course we had to buy some water and beer. It is nearly impossible to find multi-packs of regular, noncarbonated water. What is it with sparkling water this side of the pond? I swear, because I chug so much water all the time, this sparkling stuff has just been super abrasive on my throat. I did get some orange juice, which I knew had to be good because it's called "Yes!"

Obviously, "da" means "yes." Also worth of note, the word for "orange" is "apelcini." Darn false cognates! 

We also came across the original Czech Budweiser brand, which had a trademark dispute with Anheuser-Busch back in the early 20th Century and forced the American Budweiser to be labeled and marketed as just "Bud" in Europe. 

Budweiser Budvar

I got excited, because in and around all these apartment complexes are a bunch of playgrounds—the eastern European kind I had hoped for with lots of jungle gym and bar apparatuses—which give me somewhere new and exciting to work out. The cold also adds another fun element. I was most excited about the rings.

Rings in the center. Also a funny shaped thing on the right for  awkward pull-ups.

I can practice more gymnast style exercises, getting a variation from my normal pull-ups, push-ups, and dips routine. Time to get pumped!

More pullup areas...

Not for workouts, but I just thought this slide was worthy of note. The snow ruins the affect, but the slide goes directly to the pavement. Must instill butts of steel in the kids!!

Training, Training, Birthday, Training… 23 October - 4 November 2011

Okay, so it’s been a couple weeks. Perhaps you've given up on checking for updates. I know how much you've missed me. Well, you might be in for another marathon post. Let’s see how this goes.

Following the completion of OFS-1, we had to attend light vehicle driving training. I had been semi-dreading this experience, because I knew we’d be required to drive manual vehicles, but my experience with manuals consists of a couple times being coached by someone in the passenger seat in slow residential zones. I had kept meaning to find ways to practice over the summer, but of course I didn’t. So here I was, a pretty competent driver in the states when it comes to mountain roads and other difficult conditions, but I had to drive like I was a little n00b trying to learn the stick.

But, as luck would have it, I talked myself into being good at it with my sweet Zen driving skills and voila! I drove (and maneuvered) an old stick shift car unaccompanied by an instructor. It was like getting my driver’s license all over again, except we did more badass maneuvers. We had to do an exercise where there was somewhat of an L-shaped area demarcated by cones, and we had to slam the breaks and skid initially before turning sharply at the end, thereby simulating crash avoidance. It also happened to be the first day that it started snowing, which made for a little wilder time. After that we had to practice weaving through cones at two different speeds, proving that it is impossible to not miss a cone trying to sustain 60 km/h. By the last maneuver, I was no longer stalling out every time I came to a stop. I was also able to start the car on a (slight) uphill grade.

One of the cars had somewhat of a "Little Miss Sunshine" moment where it wouldn't start without a good push...

Our driving instructor was cool little man named Dmitry, who obviously had a lot of professional driving experience. He would also tell stories of crazy races he would sometimes have with his friends and the stupid things he did. He also had the largest collection of driving-related video clips (serious, funny, instructional, etc.) I had ever seen, and he enjoyed showing all of them to us. He also really enjoyed showing off his spinning and skidding u-turn skills, sometimes with us riding. Unfortunately the only English he knew pertained to driving, so many of his jokes in the classroom lecture portion were lost in the translation. That’s another thing. For two weeks, we had classes taught us in Russian with an English translator repeating every sentence, elongating all explanations by more than two-fold. I saw “more than” because there were often mis-translations and a lot of clarification had to happen. The first day, our translator was a designated medical translator to handle on-site communications with the nurse-on-duty. But when it came to automobile specifics, the poor girl was often at a loss. The second day was the most skilled translator, a woman who had spent time in Texas and had a definite grasp of the technical and idiomatic terms. She was also the only translator to speak in real-time, as the instructor was talking, which got the class to move along a lot better. Consequently, I was less likely to fall asleep and be called on by Dmitry to demonstrate something to the class.

Oh, and I can’t forget to mention the full-sized driving simulator that they had in the driving school. Dmitry could put any sort of scenario settings up on the front screen and we could attempt to drive them. Most notable was a setting that made men suddenly pop out of manholes that you had to avoid. Sometimes they just seemed impossible. I think Dmitry was just messing with us most of the time.

Treacherous mountain road

Our lovely driving class. Dmitry's in the center, flanked by women.  What a  guy!

In my last entry I spoke of the two ways of beef preparation—the stew and the ground beef loaf that could take the form of a ball or a turd. Well, the turd shape just went to a whole new level, when they decided to fix what they labeled “kebab.” Behold, the poop-on-a-stick!

And, as I said before, it tastes the same as all the other ground beef concoctions and is fine once smothered in hot sauce.

Oh, and as I mentioned before, it snowed on the day of the driver’s test (October 25^th), which I think is the earliest that I’ve ever seen it snow (not counting up above 7000 feet in the mountains). This was also a very exciting day for us, because it was…..Tuesday! Yes, we were excited for Tuesday, because our first and only full day off for our three weeks at the training center was Wednesday. Following that, we would have nine straight days of Industrial Safety Training, as required by Russian Law for all Specialists (as we are designated by the immigration authorities, “Highly Qualified Specialists,” to be exact. Teehee.). Many of our new found Kazakh and Azerbaijani friends from OFS-1 had already had the training and would be leaving us. It was also going to be my birthday on Saturday, and what better way to celebrate the big 2-3 than to go out on the town with your international buddies on the preceding Tuesday night?

So, everybody got all pumped up and decked out (in what few going-out clothes we had packed), and I found myself singing my own version of Rebecca Black’s “Friday” with the word “Friday” replaced by “Tuesday” and the word “Weekend” replaced by “Wednesday.” It actually worked out really well, except for the people who had to listen to me.

We boarded our bus (why try to fit everybody in cabs when we can all ride a chartered bus?) and rode the half hour that it takes to reach downtown Tyumen. We weren’t sure where we should go, so we had the bus drop us off in the city center and we started walking. We passed a Mcdonald’s and some sushi bars (there is actually a lot of sushi here, though I’m not exactly eager to try it) and then we landed at a quiet restaurant with very modern but boring décor. It didn’t take us long to decide we wanted a place where it was ok to dance and get a little rowdy, so we called up some cabs and drove across town to a better place. I don’t remember what it was called, but that really doesn’t matter.

Hookahs are very popular in Russia (I’ve seen them sold in supermarkets) and judging by the smell, this place was no exception. We ordered our drinks and I assured everyone I would be sticking to a couple beers, because after my Vodka experience the previous week, I’d rather take it slow. Of course, nobody listened, because they said we’re celebrating my birthday, so I found myself sharing tequila shots with Kazakhs and wine with a Texan, and then I was dancing-off with an Azerbaijani. Some of the guys also ordered a hookah, and I wanted to see how they compared to American hookahs, so I had some as well. American hookahs have more of a flavor in my opinion. But I still had fun getting creative with the smoke. All in all, it was a pretty fun night. Though, like the last time, I went into it somewhat dehydrated, and I spent the next day with a bigger headache than I needed to. But hey, it was our day off! Anyway, here are some highlights from that night….

Hookah smoke in my Guinness. Classy, no?

Tequila in Russia. I like to be different.

Dancing cage? Yes. Did I dance in it? Maybe. Is there documentation? Yes, but you're not seeing it.

I think this one captured the most people with Andrey's fantastic arm length, and it also captures the essence of the night.

The next day, headache and all, I joined my fellow International Mobile employees on a trip back downtown to a mall. Everybody had some essentials they wanted. We all needed something in the way of phones, SIM cards, and/or calling cards. We also had Paul—the Scottish-Italian who knows enough Russian to get by and who also chose not to go out with us the previous night and thus didn’t feel like death. He handled most of the cell phone difficulties. Apparently it’s really hard to get it across to people that you just want a pay-as-you-go SIM card. Unfortunately, in Russia, everything is still region-specific, and once I am to leave the Tyumen region, I’d have to get another SIM card and phone card in the Krasnoyarsk region, so as not to incur roaming and other long distance charges. Oy! Paul opened up his phone and I saw at least 4 cards just chilling in there with the battery. I’m sure he has more. I’m having trouble even memorizing one new phone number for myself. Geez!

I did learn another valuable lesson: Mannequins here have a lot more personality than in America. Check out these kids:

I ended up sleeping the rest of the day and night, upon returning to the training center. It was great.

The following day we had our first Safety Training class. Since these classes are required by the Russian government and its endless bureaucracy, the classes would be taught to us in Russian. With a translator. For nine days. Unfortunately, this translator neither seemed to have a lot of the legal terminology down (we probably covered more policy than actual procedure), nor did she have much in the way of a technical oil background. Needless to say, it was a rough nine days. Luckily, the first two days, for “Labor Safety,” we were taught by a man who looked like Peter Lorre, and all I had to do was picture him screaming, “Rick! Rick!” and running from the police in Casablanca, and I would smile and it would all be okay.

Imagine this guy teaching you about labor safety policy.

On Friday night, Paul and Jeff convinced me that we needed to celebrate my REAL birthday. This time I actually avoided the call of the drink and stuck to just a couple beers. We began our celebration by celebrating that the café in the Training Center’s sports building now served beer. Then we went into town to look for a good nightclub. We first went to a little café and had some pizza (the first mayonnaise-less pizza I’d seen in the country) and Paul asked the cute waitress for recommendations on the best discos in town. She came back later with a list of three places, named Giraffe, Mirage, and Pyramid (all translated phonetically from the Cyrillic form, so actually Zhiraf, Mirazh, and Pirimid). We decided we’d try Giraffe, and we hailed a “cab” to take us there. Despite the accumulating snow, the driver was very enthusiastic about accelerating around every turn. He also was more interested in turning and talking (more like yelling) to Paul in the passenger seat in Russian than he was about watching the road. But, thankfully, we made it to Giraffe. One could only discern the Giraffe theme by the statues out front.

Inside, it was all futuristic themed. The club was several stories tall, and the second story had cosmic bowling. The floor with the coat room also had a sweet Einstein bust thing.

Then we made our way up to the dance room. We got nailed with a high cover charge to enter, but the music was alright and the women were pretty nice too. Interestingly, all the women danced while all the men stood on the outside and watched, except for some extra-metro looking guys that went right in the middle. I wondered if this was the usual flow of things. Paul kept assuring us that the girls would be all over us once they realized we were foreign and therefore a novelty, but I wasn’t feeling it and had not had enough to drink to even think about going wild on the dance floor with all these Russian girls. Paul went up to a girl and started some Russian small talk (I’m just not good at that yet) and he told her it’s my birthday. She told him she wasn’t interested. I said, “Let’s go. This place is silly.” I mean, it was kinda cool, and really well themed, in a Dr. Seuss kind of way. And it was all too expensive. I’m trying to save my money here!

So, back to the training center we went. And along came six more straight days of safety training. I won’t bore you with the details. I’m trying to forget them. But for each of the five training sections we underwent, we had to take both a written test and an oral test before a panel of people from the Russian who-knows-what. Frankly, I’m so sick of all that stuff, I don’t even want to rant about it.

On Thursday the 3^th, our second to last day together before we went our separate ways to our locations around Russia (except for Jeff, who’d be joining me in Krasnoyarsk), we decided to go out, but instead of drinking, we went bowling (and drank a little). So, in mall food courts here, the food counters sell beer. Is that not awesome? I think it’s awesome.

I was also impressed by my Tuborg bottle and how it had its own cap tab thing. I really did find it interesting enough to take a picture. Sorry if it disappoints. I stood up an issue of Mango magazine behind it just to make things more interesting.

Ooooo, special cap tab thingy....

I had one of my worst showings in bowling ever, but I will contend that these lanes were shorter than in the US. I’m probably just BSing but it seemed like it. I was also trying to work the whole side spinning method, which gets me a gutter ball 50% of the time. It can also get me cool strikes… just not with the frequency I’d hoped for. But hey, we had a lot of fun! Look at us!

Friday was our last day of safety class. It was Fire Safety Training. It was pretty easy, except when the instructor showed us some traumatizing fire videos. Here in Russia, they have no qualms about scaring the bajeezers out of you with graphic videos of what not to do. They worked for me, at least…

Okay, there's more to say, but I'm posting this, so you actually have an update to read. Woohoo!!