Topic...confirmed, laziness...also confirmed

Days 19 to 25, 24th Feb to 2nd Mar 2009:

Finally, i'm posting a new blog. Was just too lazy to post for the past week, not to mention occasionally having a little more things to do here. Ok, maybe only for a day or two.

The past week was divided between visiting a few more departments/sections, working on my report and presentation, and twiddling my thumbs. Yes, i have the audacity to mention that i still have time to sit around shaking leg (the nerve of this guy!). I admit, i haven't exactly been really productive and as usual, am regretting it. I've got two or three more sections to cover, then i'm done. But work on my report and presentation only started about two or three days ago and i wasted a bit of time. I'll be trying to finish at least a draft of both by Wednesday coz i'll be flying to Muscat on the Thursday and then back to Houston on Saturday (7th of March).

So, what else has been happening besides that? I spent the morning of the 24th with Mohd again, scouting for a new area to move the recorder truck to. Actually, i was supposed to go with the vibe pushers in the morning but one thing led to another and i ended up with Mohd. After he had finished scouting the area, he asked if i wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon with the vibe pushers but i was feeling too lazy by then, so i just followed him back to camp after lunch.

The 'nodding donkey'

The next day, i went with Mansoor, one of the line foremans. I suppose he's a bit old now though as his hair and beard are graying, but i won't hazard a guess since i suck at guessing people's ages. He supervises the line crew who pick-up/lay-out the cables and geophones. I spent only about an hour with him before he sent me to one of the vibe pushers. Originally, the plan was to spend the morning with him and the afternoon with the vibe pushers but since i pretty much already understood how they did things, i agreed to hop on to the vibe pusher's truck.

One of the line crew members picking-up the cable in the morning fog

The rest of the morning was spent with Abdullah or Abadi as his friends call him (since there were a few Abdullahs around). His command of English was just marginal but he tried his best to explain his responsibilities and how the shooting plan currently was. Again, there wasn't that much to fill up a whole two or three hours and i actually ended up napping for a while after the whole story was finished. I tried making small talk with him after that but i ran out of things to ask him too. Towards lunch, the vibes under his care were serviced one by one by the field mechanics and i got to get up close and personal with the machines. Since the vibes basically operate 24 hours, they have to be refueled and serviced in the field itself.

The DSD (Digital Servo Drive) unit inside the vibe.
This thingy here receives commands from the DPG (Digital Pilot Generator) in the recorder truck which tells it when to vibrate

One of the vibes being serviced

One of the mechanics got into a minor accident in which he ended up with a really painful and bleeding (rather profusely) finger tip. One of the J.O.s who was nearby was then called to fetch him back to camp to have his finger treated. In the mean time, Abadi helped bandage his finger. My lunch at this time was supposed to have been sent with Abadi's but it got sent to the recorder truck instead. So Abadi asked the J.O. for his help to pick-up my lunch. I decided to follow the J.O. instead, to save him the trouble of coming back to deliver it. Since he had to drop the mechanic off first, i ended up going back to camp again. Earlier i had asked Rakesh (one of the observers at the recorder truck) to arrange for my lunch to be sent with Abdullah's but i guess i didn't pass the message correctly which ended up with my lunch getting sent to the recorder truck. On the way back to camp, he sounded a little annoyed after the J.O. told him I that i was with him, saying something like he should have been informed first. Whether that was directed at me or the J.O. i'm not sure, but it was partly my fault anyway.

On the 26th, i visited the Obs Workshop. This is where all the electronic equipment is maintained and repaired. I wanted to talk to Ian (i think he's Scottish) as he is quite experienced but he was a bit stressed out with a network problem and was trying to sort it out. So i talked with Randy (a Filipino) and asked him about the stuff they do over there. Randy's quite experienced as well, though not as much as Ian as he had just been transferred to that department recently. After getting the information i needed, he passed me to Francis who is the supervisor of the geophone workshop. There, they repair or replace the many geophones that have problems in the line. Francis is a little Indian guy who seems quite old. It seems that all the supervisory level people are old timers in this crew. Not necessarily old, so to speak but with at least an average of 10 years of experience. So, he showed me around, explaining how they repair the geophones, or in half of the cases, replace them. I got one of the magnets inside the spoilt geophones as a souvenir (but you can see these things all over camp anyway). The rest of the morning, i spent looking at a manual in the Obs Workshop. Suprise, suprise...i found material for my proposed topic (which was still not yet confirmed).

A geophone string. That yellow thing with the sharp spike is the geophone and it can detect your heartbeat if held in your fingers

The next day was spent with the Survey department. It seems i caught Trevor offguard as Mohd forgot to inform him i was coming over. In any case, i followed one of the GPS guys as they went out to mark the vibro points (or VPs) and geophone string points. The guy i followed was another Indian veteran named Vijay. Again, after about an hour's worth of explaining and questions, i had nothing else to ask. I had to sit in the back this time as the passenger side was just filled with the small biodegradable plastic sandbags used to mark the points. The truck has a GPS antenna just above and a little behind the driver's seat so what he does is to drive to the location and drop the bag out of the truck. It has to be within 30cm of the mark, so there's quite a bit of driving, stopping and reversing to do. Sitting in the back, going back and forth and sometimes through bumpy paths, i couldn't help but feel a little dizzy and eventually fell asleep. Thankfully, he had planned out his course well so when he finished the second line we were only approximately 2km away from camp. He dropped me off around 1.30pm before heading back to finish his work for the day. I didn't really pray to God to send me back early but twice He delivered. He truly understands what our hearts desire, even though we don't voice it out. Don't get me wrong about the whole thing though, i do think that it's a bit boring doing what these people do out here in the field but it's even more so when you're just tagging along and not having to work with them.

My second day with the survey department was again spent in a truck, this time with Al (short for Alfredo, who is the only other Filipino in the camp) and Imran (a Pakistani). These guys map the routes for the vibes at night as it is more dangerous at night due to the darkness. Basically, all they do is do a lot of driving. They just program the GPS receiver, called a Garmin to record as they drive around areas where the terrain is more hilly or where there's hazards, such as structures along the source lines. Once again, i couldn't help but doze off after i switched seats with Imran at the back...sigh. As most of the area they needed to cover was flat, we were back in camp in time for lunch.

The next day, as Trevor was still busy sorting out his problems, i spent the morning going round camp with Keef, the British Chief Mechanic. It was supposed to be just around the workshop but it somehow ended up with him showing me around the whole camp. Among some of the places we dropped by was the junior staff kitchen, the junior staff quarters and even the make-shift mosque. It was also interesting to learn that all the used water (fr0m the kitchen and showers) and the waste was treated in two large tanks behind the camp. These tanks use bacteria to break down the waste before discharging it in the desert. And i was wondering why there were sprinklers in the desert...mystery solved.

Today, Trevor finally had a little bit of time to describe how the survey department operates. The morning was spent with him in his office. He even printed some notes for my reference. Later in the afternoon, it was a short interview with Steve, the Australian party manager and a short session with Stephane (a Frenchman) in the QC department. It's just amazing how all the crew here are so helpful, giving you the time of the day to answer your questions and all while they have their own work that needs to be done.

Well, that about wraps up one week's worth of blogging all in one post, ha ha. Tomorrow, i will be tying up all the loose ends before fully concentrating on my field report and presentation. It's high time i use a sentence without the word 'try' in it.