My greenie area of Indonesia

25 days, I now know how long I have to spend in the jungle to reduce myself to creating a blog and filling it with pics and stories. The last 25 days have been spent in a very remote section of Indonesia on the island of Papua, near the small village of Babo (find it on google maps if you care). It took us about two days to get here. We had a small layover on the island of Sulawesi, then spent a day in the city of Sorong, which was the last day of normal civilization I've seen for almost a month.  The flight into Sorong was the most terrible experiences I have had on an airplane. I think one of the engines on the airplane was broken, so that made for a loud and frightening cruise at high altitudes. Then when we landed the weather changed all of a sudden at an altitude of about 100 feet. It went from clear to stormy with zero visibility in about 5 secs. So, the plane almost touched down and then took off again, all with a bad engine. But we made it.

So, then another plane ride across the island. This one was a little smoother and scenic.

Then a boat ride.

We finally made it to...the wrong location. 

So, we took another boat ride, this time to the correct location.

That's when I was given the royal treatment and got the VIP shipping container(everyone else had 4-man rooms). So this was my abode for a little over three weeks.

 Plus, I get this almost brand new, modern, totally stainless steel bathroom, which wasn't bad after all the bugs were exterminated by my shoe. It actually kind of served as the Halliburton communal shower.

The guys on the rig, the Kerui 701, were all cool and nice, with exception to one or two bad ones, but that is inevitable for any job. The drilling crew was mostly Chinese guys, they were great. We had some good times. Their schedule was even more awesome than ours, they have 3 months on and 1 month off. But most of the people were from Indonesia. I was at that location for a little more than 3 weeks and I can easily say if you averaged the work I did, it may average out to about 15 minutes a day of real work. I did get a lot of reading done though. I finished "The Count of Monte Cristo" in that time, which was like a lot of reading, for me anyway. I also watched a few movies, some many times. I wasn't adequately prepared since I was told I was only going to be gone for a week or two. 

Anyways, I got tired of living such an extravagant lifestyle and decided to trade all that in for a communal life in the four man room over at the other well on another part of the island.

I also put together my jungle survival kit. Not sure what that water is doing in there though, maybe its there to wash my hands before I eat the pringles. Also, not pictured, but included in the kit are oreo cookies with assorted flavors of cream filling, like peanut butter or strawberry or doublestuff. I would go take a pic of them, but they are in my room but I am too lazy to walk over there.

Below are the guys I have the pleasure of working with. The one on the left is Muammar Quaddafi. What? You thought he was killed by a mob in Libya? No, he just cut his Jerry Curl off and is now living in Indonesia working for Halliburton wireline. He's actually a pretty nice guy for an ousted ex-dictator. The guy in the middle is Andreas, he is the inspiration for this blog and my mentor here in Indonesia. He's introduced me to some good Indo food and some good sushi in Surabaya. The one on the right, Ogit, is my inspiration to not do drugs. He is a seismic engineer in training, he gets the real engineers their dinner and drinks. He also sends emails. Side note: he also was good friends in college with someone on the Malaysian Airlines flight that disappeared. Small world

The resemblance is striking.

This guy in the above pic is Wedi. When he laughs he looks like Obama. Don't worry, he is actually useful and he is way cooler because he doesn't wear bike helmets or mom jeans. 

This man is brand new like me. His name is Darwoto. He is super cool too. He used to be a lumberjack, well, I think, his English is on par with my Indonesian. He did something with wood, I'm pretty sure of that. 

And finally, this gangsta below is my right hand man, Nyoman. He secured me the special VIP dinners and got me my rooms. He's getting nominated for an award of some kind.

I've also survived my first volcano eruption in Indonesia. It was quite traumatizing, I'm not sure I'm ready to talk about it yet. Now I kinda know how the people of Pompeii felt and I feel somehow connected to them. As you can see from the pic below it was about a 0.5 out of 10 on the volcano eruption scale of seriousness, which I think is equal to the dust on the top bookshelf of my house.