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.