Eastern Siberia Part 2: Mood Swings

Finally I have time to post on the possibly awaited second part of my trip to Eastern Siberia.  During the flight I had many thoughts going through my head of 'why am i here?', 'what did I do to deserve this punishment?' and strongly considering making a life change if i survived the flight.

I had mixed feelings while getting off the plane as I knew I would be spending around 3 weeks in this area before I could go home AND the only way out was going back on that awful flight.  My mood started to improve after getting a chance to see our base, meet the crews and get into work mode.  The one good thing about working in such an isolated place is that you don't have anyone on-site except for people doing the physical work.  I was the closest thing to a boss at that location so it was nice just to focus on work and not have to deal  with all the extras.   

2am

 

One of the first things I was warned about when I was heading this far north is the concept of 'white nights'.  This is the time of the year when there is no darkness, 24 hours of sunlight.  In the northern regions of Russia this lasts for about 3 months.  I prefer it to the winter when there is only a couple hours of sunlight a day but it makes it very difficult to get a good night's sleep when the sun won't go down. 

The initial reason I had made this trip to Eastern Siberia was to witness an on-the-job operation of a young engineer to see if he was comfortable to this job without supervision. So this meant I had to visit a rig and watch him through the entire operation. 

No, it's not a pterodactyl..it's a mosquito

It was going to be a long job, middle of nowhere, mosquitoes in both size and numbers that I have never seen before, and having to resist the urge to do the work and only supervise.  On day one of three I was already bored and the weather was less than ideal. I was sinking into a low, nothing to do, nowhere to go and dreaming of the day I could finally leave this place. 

Then, in the morning of day 2 the skies cleared up and the sun came out. There was a light breeze which kept the mosquitoes away.  The job was going very smoothly and I found myself relaxing, enjoying the weather, the peace and quiet (aside from the drilling rig in front of us).  You can see my level of calm as I sit in our work unit enjoying a cup of tea, an apple and working on my Siberian sun tan. These days it's one of the most coveted types of tans. 

a natural at Siberian sun tanning

 There was one manual laborer who spoke a bit of English and every chance he had he wanted to test out his pronunciation with me.  So, once in a while we would go grab another cup of tea, have a couple snacks and he would ask me something in English and I would respond in Russian.  On this second day my Russian was starting to flow and I was feeling like I was finally getting a grasp on some basic conversation. The rest of the day was much of the same...working outside in the sun, light breeze, lots of food/tea breaks, russian/english conversation.  I was feeling good again, it was such a significant change in mood from day 1 to day 2 and as I sat in my chair, watching the sun NOT go down (ever), thinking back on how good the day was I take a sip of tea, completely forget where my mouth was and pour hot tea all over my crotch.    Back to neutral.

The rest of my trip was mostly uneventful until July 1st when I left and celebrated Canada Day in the airport. (which can  be read about in my previous blog post).

Canada day in Russia

This post should be Part 2 of my trip to Eastern Siberia but i had to interrupt that process to describe my Canada day.

This was my third Canada day I spent living in a different country and it was setting up to be the worst one since the last two were spent with other Canadians living abroad or, at least, with friends. The majority of this one was spent traveling in helicopters and planes from vankor oilfield to Krasnoyarsk. There wasn't any real chance even for some solo celebration.

I did get satisfaction but in a unique way. I was in the airport of the vankor oilfield and wasting a lot of time waiting on my ride out of there. There were two coworkers with me with different levels of English skills. As we chatted in english I could see confused looks coming from other passengers directed at me. It was not for a while after we had been speaking in english when I decided to stand up and stretch. There was a quick break in conversation and the other passengers piped up and started questioning the Russian person I was traveling with. My Russian is poor but I know when people are talking about me so I turned to my coworker and asked what they had said. She told me they were asking where I was from, what I was doing here, etc. I asked her if she had answered them. She said she hadn't and told me they were waiting for my answer.

So here I am, now standing in front of a crowd of 20 Russians, all staring at me and waiting for me to speak. As it was Canada day I took my chance to say, loud and proud,

'I Am Canadian!'

felt good. Then the post-statement russian conversation turned to questions of why I was
there, how much I was getting paid and other curiosities as they we're amazed that someone from another country would actually choose to be in this part of Russia. A few people wanted to come up and meet me and shake my hand. It was like being a celebrity just for being Canadian...the way it should be.

Happy Canada Day!

No explanation required