Cerita Palas

Just wanted to make an official entry about my stint in January 2009. I was offshore for a month in Exxon's waters. Had a good time there. The crew were a whole different bunch. Pros and cons, life is fair, really. To argue with that would be similar to being unthankful. I love my religion. (Tetibe jekkk..)

This is my room. My parents always find peace when I give them a good picture. I got the Senior Operating Superintendent room. So that was why the other bosses were so keen on kicking me off the platform. Buggers.

This is me trying to be a tough cookie. Thats my supervisor next to me and the furthest right is my Location Manager. Trying to talk some sense into my boss. I am proud of this picture. Most people don't think I have what it takes. In due time, I will bloom to become a full grown bitch. Haha.

The galley in Guntong-A, which is the mother platform for the Guntong Field. We did our operation on a satellite platform, the Palas-A platform. We sleep and eat at the mother platform.

During the first few day of my stay in early Jan, the weather was super rough. We commute by boat to the satellite platform and I am also proud that I did not throw up, unlike some others. Then they decided it was too rough to travel by boat, and we had to go by chopper. The chopper would leave Guntong-A around 10am, so we idled to our fullest by sharing stories with Pak Usop and Muaz. If we were to leave by boat, we would have to be ready to go by 6am.

This time around, coiled tubing had a cementing campaign. The crane lifts the 1 ton (1,000 kg) bag of cement and us lab rats would have to poke the contents out. Pretty nasty stuff.




Going on the transfer basket. This is our mode of transport throughout the entire campaign. So I can claim that I am pro at this. Good or bad weather. But its not good to gloat, cause no one can predict the weather..

Dah naik bot. Sume tido. Bagus kan?

This is a shot from far of Palas-A. Hello Palas, good-bye Palas. Thanks for the memories and all the lessons learnt. By the way, our job was pretty messed up. We had more than one incident which did not involve any personnel. Just the equipment. So we are all thankful to live another day and to constantly listen to the lecture on propper maintenance and shit.

Regardless, I had a good time there. My first cement job, the new friends I made, the tough company man who was always asking me about cement barrels and recipes. Thank you all.

Now I just sit in the base and implement plans and flowcharts. What a life, huh?

Dearest Jason

We snuck out on the night on the 4th of March. Cockle-doodle-doo, the clock ticked 4:45. But my driver-lover-man was late. Sigh. And KL traffic was like hell as always. Concert kot??

Funny thing was, throughout the whole musical not everyone around me knew the lyrics to the songs. Have to say that the latest album was not my favourite. I loved Mr.A-Z so much and felt deeply about all of the lyrics in that album. Luckily enough, I knew most of the lyrics. Except for the fast numbers like where all I did was say ‘Good job’ – lifted my hands up high and waited for the down low part.. and this one, ‘I do not pick up the phone if, I do not know who is calling…’

So much fun was Jason’s way of warming up with the crowd. The guy just blabs out music from his mouth and would have us imitating him which was great fun. And if you listen to his songs carefully, he is a funny guy. I loved Geek in the Pink, but jenga wasn’t found yet so I had to sing alone. Haha. Sadis tol.

More pathetically when I had neighbouring concert goers just cry and shriek like crazy and they didn’t even know the chorus part to I’m Yours. Pretty dead giveaway, don’t you think?

Towards the end Jason started introducing his band and took Polaroid pictures of them and threw it towards the crowd. Awesome!! Oh by the way, Jason has a collection of Polaroids he made a book out of, but not sure if they have it here in Malaysia.

The concert started sharply at 8:30 and ended on the dot of 10:00 pm. Jason must be a punctual sleep early guy. Well, good for him. Woudn’t want most of the crowd sleeping in the next day and missing their early train to work.

***

Dearest Jason,

Please please please come back to Malaysia. Hahahhaa. Thank you. I will buy the rm80 t-shirt again if you do =) mcm la die tau derang jual baju kat lua tu..

3 Cakes and an Inferno

Ok so scratch the previous sappy entry about boo-hooing the night of my birthday. I was blessed with kind friends who sent MMS that had pictures of us when we were sweet and young (uni years!) and even had songs enscribed in em MMS..

I need to remind myself that I've never had more than one cake on my birthday. Ever. I used to read other people's blog and get all annoyed because some of them would be like, 'I got the usual three cakes and four hundred pressies as expected, again, this year..' gile diva. Haha.

Kak Aida threw me a suprise when I got back from an SPE talk the day of my birthday (how bad a timing can the stupid talk get?) She got me the works!! A cute chocolate cake, complete with 25 candles. At this age, cakes and candles (especially since I reside in pious Terengganu.. no offense tahu) by themselves can be a luxury. Superlicious!! Thank you thank you.

And on the 28th of Feb, I headed down to KL to kiss my bantal busuk at home and I got my cheesecake version of a partayy only to have really noisy and bitchful bunch of gurls sitting next to us at alexis'. I had great company and happy food.

So yeah, I had a greaatttt 25th kick-off. Thank you. Very very much. Hugs.

Leila

This picture was taken exactly a year ago, when I was away in my first school. It was a quiet Sunday morning I spent on my computer, airing out my room and going through my notes. I went downstairs and Leila was all upset because I did not tell her it was my birthday. Bashfully, I accepted her concoction of vanilla ice-cream (which was her favourite since we always had a free flow of vanilla ice-cream stocked in our fridge just inc ase we had to entertain our friends when they came over for brainstorming), cadbury chocolate sticks, fresh strawberries and topped off with drizzled thick nutella.

She practically forced me to finish the bowl off with her. Damn. There went my diet for the week. Come to think of it, a year ago I wasn’t too worked up on how much I tipped the scales at.

This year, I was asked what I had not yet achieved by 25. I felt like it was a pretty dumb question. I did not feel the urge to be encouraged to think about things I had not accomplished. I had a feeling it would lead to me being unthankful.

Last night I cried before going to sleep. It was the first time I celebrated my birthday without my usual crowd of friends. Haha, time to grow up.

But – I did get 2 rounds of cakes, complete with 25 candles!

So boo hoo, happy birthday to me.