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

Eastern Siberia Part 1: The Trip to Nowhere

Finally, the time came for me to travel to Eastern Siberia.  I was actually looking forward to this since it was a part of Russia I hadn't seen yet and have been getting a bit tired of the usual locations.  I'm also very glad that my trip was taking place during the spring-summer instead of the dead of winter.  The intermediate city I had to travel to, Krasnoyarsk, is a large Siberian city and said to be the most beautiful city in Siberia.  On the outskirts there is a national park area which offered a good hike and pleasant views of the surrounding area.  Instead of getting a chance to see that I luckily got to spend the day in the office.  Maybe I'll get that opportunity on my next trip out this way.  Below is a view of my stops as I traveled from Tyumen to our remote base.

Flight Path

I was only spending a night there and the next day was off to a large oilfield to the north of Kranoyarsk.  This was the more 'interesting' and unknown part of the trip as I had to take a plane to a small town near the oilfiield and then jump on a chopper to go the rest of the way.  To give you an idea of how far north I was, the town where I would switch to the helicopter was already 163km into the polar circle.  The flight was a charter plane set up by the oil company and the plane design was more for function than comfort but just because it lacked comfort didn't mean I was very confident in its functionality.

Something resembling a plane

Massive leg room and in-flight meal

It was easily the worst plane ride I've ever had topping the previous one of flying Moscow to Tyumen when I first arrived in Russia which now seemed more like a flight on  Air Force One compared to this one.  It had the traditional fold down seats, the leg room was adequate for someone 4 feet tall and the safety card, found in the pocket in front of me, said 'Don't Bother'.  I spent the 3+ hour flight with my one knew jammed into the back of the guy in front of me, the other in the aisle.  There is the feeling in flights, usually when beginning the final  descent where the plane does a few quick drops and you get brief feeling of weightlessness before it stabilizes.  Like most people, I absolutely love that feeling so I was pleased this plane did the same thing every few minutes during the entire flight.  It was the first time I thought I might need to use the air sickness bag but i held out.  To finish the flight the pilots did a triple-tap landing just to make sure they had good contact with the ground.  It wasn't a surprise the pilots were the first ones off the plane.   

It was a self-service airline so that more revenue could go into purchasing high quality planes and doing proper maintenance, obviously. 

Baggage Claim - Get it yourself

The helicopter ride was the more comfortable part of the trip, even though the first thing I noticed when I boarded is there was a large drop hatch behind me and started worrying about the string and tape that was most likely being used to keep it closed.  Anyways, we made it without issue and I took a quick video of the some of the landscape we flew over.  It's not very exciting but was a different view than flying over the Gulf.  I can't wait for the flight back. 

well, hi there

Transportation for the 2nd leg of the trip

USSR Ice Cream

It tastes the same for everyone.  It has to.  

My Russian language lesson for you

Now that I've been in Russia for about 8 months I figure it's time for me to teach you all some of the language. 

Basic:

Здравствуйте - Hello   (pronounced:  Zdras-vee-tyeh)
до свидания - Good Bye  (pronounced: Dass-vee-dahneea)
да - Yes  (Da)
нет - No (Nyet)
баклажан - eggplant (Ba-Kla-zhan)    
водка - Vodka (Vodka)
спасибо - Thank You (Spa-See-Bah)
Брюс Уиллис - Bruce Willis  (yeah, bruce freakin' willis)

 
let's practice....

     - баклажан?  
     - нет
     - водка?
     - да  
     - спасибо, Брюс Уиллис

 Intermediate:



Меня зовут Дэвид - My name is David  (Mean-ya Zo-Voot -insert Russian name-')
как вас зовут? - What is your name?  (Cock Voss Zo-Voot)
....she answers....
очень приятно - Very nice to meet you (oh-chin pre-at-nah)
я люблю вас. что ваш номер телефона? - I love you. What is your telephone number?
             (yah lew-blue Voss.  Sh-toe vash no-mair teh-leh-phone-ah?)
...she leaves....
я не понимаю - I don't understand (Yah knee Pony-my-you)

Advanced (i'll just do this phonetically, it takes too long to type in Russian)

Zdrasvite, moxnoe Indyeka, Bolshoy, Sihri c Sihrom.  Da, Da, Da.  Ovoshi...salat, pyerets, aguryets, i luk.  Da. i sauce mayonnaise. Da. Spasiba 

And that is how you order a sub from 'Aмерикан Сэндвич' (subway) with my favorite toppings.  That's all you need to know to survive. The rest comes with practice and soon you will be a professional Russian, just like this guy....


Professional Russian  (make sure to watch the entire thing

Russian lesson of the day

The story goes that a few guys were getting ready for a big night of drinking, they go to the store and purchase a biscuit each and 5 bottles of vodka.  In the morning each of the guys are suffering from severe headaches, upset stomach with vomiting, decrease in mental capacity and a pale appearance. 

Their explanation is that it must have been a bad batch of biscuits.