Thursday, July 17, 2008

The moon's upside down!

I had a blog entry written out but now that I'm in the cyber cafe I thought I might as well just bang one out (jokes to the usual address).
Well, here I am.
Managed to get pretty much everything organised before I flew out, the flight was long and rather boring, although watching the sunrise over Africa was brilliant. We stopped off in Ascension Island and I got to leave the cage to meet the local Met guys, briefly, before we were herded back on for the next part of the trip.
Arrived after about 18 hours on the plane and got a quick tour of the base and the office.
Limited to what I can actually say about the base but it's pretty good, there's a long corridor from our living area to the main mess (about a mile long) and it's a bit chilly at times - glad I brought my down jacket.
I'm sat in the cyber cafe right now, something dad didn't have when he was here, and soon I think I'll nip to Oasis for a cup of tea and a cake. Life can be pretty civilised at 52 degrees south. It's cold mind, but then it is winter, we had a day of glorious sunshine but most of the time has been dull and drizzley. I'm expecting snow this weekend.
Erm what else, oh we've got a 33m heated swimming pool, a climbing wall, a great gym (had my induction after work this morning - 3 minutes of the timetable being read and the pti asking "everyone seen the rules before? Right see me if you need anything else.") a cheap bar (whisky costs about a third of a the price of a chocolate bar :D ) a bowling alley (the pins are on cable - it's hilarious) that I got invited to on the first evening - great but I was dead on my feet by the end, library, couple of shops, few places for tea and coffee, a cinema that shows some fairly recent shows, and all this is just inside the mess complex.
I've had the landrover training and been hooning about in the works van as much as I can and I've come to realise that I like defenders! Hoping to get off the base at some point this week but I'm working this weekend when the rest of them are going off to Stanley, maybe next time. There's often chances to go on flights which I'll grab when I can but not just yet.
Work wise, it's harder than back home and different with more briefings and different conditions. Different products too. I was worried that I couldn't do it for a bit but I think that was just the newness of the situation. I need to speed up production but that'll come. Work also, like most sections down here, has a cat. He can be a bit annoying when he's begging for food but it's nice to be able to take a couple of seconds pause and say hello to him. I'll stick up some photos of Krusty, and other things, when I can.
It's the little thing that keep throwing me, I went outside and thought "Hang on! The cloud's in the wrong part of the sky and the wind's going the wrong way! My forecast is rubbish!" Then I realised I'm in the south and the sun is in the north. I'd automatically lined myself up and got it epically wrong. I also don't recognise ANY of the stars down here yet. Okay, apart from the Sun, but we don't see our local star much. I think I've seen the southern cross but need to check on that.
In general, I think I'm going to like it down here, but give me a week of work in evil weather on my own and then ask me...

2 comments:

Richard said...

Glad to hear you got there ok.

Looking forward to seeing pictures of the cat. With a name like Krusty, it must either look really ragged, or have a funky green haircut.

Strawberrypip said...

I'm quite horrified to have missed the last few weeks blogged and to have missed so much!!!
Glad to hear you're not spending all your time in bonny Scotland! Enjoy!!