Lazy day....

and the Canucks better not shit the bed again. I fell asleep only to find out that they lost. We watched parts of it and most of it with one eye open. Then I slept until 1:00



Plus, I didn't get radiated this week. Always a good thing. Here is my watch with the nuke unit in behind.

Anyways, we went for pizza last night. Acccompanied with beer of course. A little Siberian Corona for good measure. It is our weeekly adventure from the hotel. It would help getting your reserved table when you can understand Russian. We were given a table for three not realizing someone had reserved a table for nine. We were moved over right after we ordered our beer. Sending three Canadians in the first cab was probably not a wise move. We can get to the pizza place and order beer, but after that we are lost. Gawking like retards again and again. Them talking louder and slower doesn't make us understand any better.

So, we are on to another 60 some odd hour week starting tomorrow and repeat repeat the butter, cheese and mayonnaise meals. Spaghetti is so much better "biz mayonazum". I can ask for my meals "biz" many things now. Turns out the Russian menu hass more on it. The "Roats Beef" is always popular. I was eating onion on my last trip too. Turns out our newest member to the Russian trip family has the same birthday as I do. He doesn't like onions either. Stewed clear is fine, raw and heaping on a plate is just short of eating it like an apple. I had to push that aside a few times before I figured out "biz loook". Onion free meals from here on out. Except at the mine site. The cafeteria lady likes to make us cold salads with onion. I just eat that fast. Shorter time on the tongue right. She apparently loves cooking fish with bones all through it. If the taste doesn't make you gag, the bone lodged in your throat will help that along. Thankfully, we have yet to get the jellied fish smudge thing again. Irony will kick me in the ass. It will be served tomorrow now. Just because I mentioned it.

Anyhow, I am off to eat another bowel lubricating meal.

My Blogger is still in Russian. What a way to make things work easier for people. Default language apparently is triggered by the IP address of the country you are from... or in rather... in my case. If anyone knows how to set my language back to just English, then please let me know.

We have had an interesting week. Lots getting done. Today we finally had a short day and tomorrow we are resting. Well, resting after the hockey game at 4:00 in the morning. Tonight we go for pizza.

We enjoyed some mixed emotions this week. One of our translators has become good friends with a bottle. I have seen people abuse alcohol before, but this is sad in every sense. We chuckled when we first saw him and thought to ourselves, "what else is new. He is feeling no pain." Shortly thereafter he was being helped to his room to avoid embarassment. I was told once that you can never know the story that is untold of how a person deals with their life outside of the realm in which you are familiar with them. Whether it be work or play, everyone has a secret and private side that is discussed very little. We can only hope that he realizes what he has brought upon himself and turns it around before he hurts himself. He has been unfit for work the last few days and probably unfit for walking around as well. After dinner last night, this guy was standing in the hallway as his toilet supply line disconnected and flooded his room. He seemed to have come around and was coherent again, but we figure by his demeanor this morning, he continued drinking through the night after he could regain entrance to his room. Unless of course, he started his day with booze.

On a happy note, we discovered one of our companions working a different job on the same site is a Polish man that has lived in Poland, South Africa and now Australia. We were discussing how many languages were in different parts of the world, and in doing so, I called him by his African name (click)Tomas spelled !Tomas (Russell Peters anyone) He could not contain himself as he obviously had never heard the joke and could relate as there are many people that speak with the clicking and knocking jaw sounds of tribal tongues. Laughter is contagious and him being in tears brought joy to the table after our intoxicated translator scraped up his pride and went to his room.

I need a nap before dinner. I'll write more tomorrow maybe.

Well, I didn't get radiated. Maybe tomorrow.

In the meantime...

here are some pics





Нажав "Готово", вы сможете изменить сообщение и опубликовать его в своем блоге.

I think that means my picture went somewhere...



Tell you more later.

Time flies when you quit your job overseas...

...just kidding... we told that to one of my bosses back home in a text message. That got his attention. He said he could actually picture me throttling someone and just packing up and leaving. Ha ha. Don't let the foul mouth and tattoos fool you. I am a very peaceful person... unless you piss me off of course.

Anyways, we have been continuing on with the same old. Varying amounts of success for sure. I know I always say I won't bore you with job details, but today I am reading up on nuclear density gauges and need to keep my wits about me for zaftra utrum (tomorrow morning). BUT, I got a watch to use for the duration of my stay. If you thought you had a fancy watch, then ask yourself... does it have a built in digital Gamma radiation indicator? In simple terms it is a Geiger-Muller tube technology with a DER registration and indication range of 0.01 - 4000 mSv/h (0.001 - 400 mR/h) and it even tells where the sun is in the sky by means of two little pointer stick things spinning in a circle. Unfortuantely, I have to give it back. Fortunately, I have yet to hear if it has any form of warning signal to tell me to back away from the Cs-137 source...

Tomorrow, should be fun. Another day in the life of RJDK. If anyone is worried for my sake, don't be. The radiation is lower than what a lightbulb emits under normal operation. When and if it fails... I will be running away like a man trying not to radiate himself. They have these things in breweries too. Here I am only to setup the electronics portion. The Source and detector needs to be handled by somebody licensed by a nuclear authority and be willing to put their yetsa (balls) on a chopping block if something were to ever to go wrong with one. Same rules for Canada.

But, good news... we got the Profibus network back down to 1.5Mbps. Woohoo! It was so obvious why it was different than the others.

So, other than work, we spent last night having a little hallway party here at the hotel. We thought it was a great idea so nobody had to have the intrusion into their room and be left with a late night straggler or a big mess. The hotel security said "nyet" to that after we devoured our 10 pizzas and were starting in on beer and wine. Apparently some big shot was coming to the hotel and they didn't want us there or something. That was the excuse anyways. We were on the third floor and all the fancy rooms are on the other floors. (I know because my room ain't as fancy as the 5th floor President's Suite with slippers and housecoats.) So, we migrated to another room and actaully abandoned the party due to a MSN message from the boss. We talked work for a few minutes and then felt very safe with the distance to begin bashing him a little. He wasn't entirely pleased with the "Rob quit" joke. We found it amusing. After all the lightwieghts went to bed, we ventured out for beer and settled down with a little Life of Brian. We almost watched it all. Most of it with one eye open and then called it a night.

Sorry for text only too. I haven't turned my camera on in a few days. Plus, my blogger is all in Russian now. Опубликовать means publish I think. Выйти is logout maybe. Going by feel and memory here. this was saved as draft the first time. Ha ha.
I can read and pronounce the words, I just haven't a clue what they mean. But, so far my Russian is improving. I can insult fluently. Even the other day I showed my proficiency in "hello, how are you?" only to confuse the guy into thinking I understood what the hell he was going to say after that.

"Zdrast vuyt ye" I said
"Zdrast vuyt ye" he replied with a much more authentic Russian accent."Kagdyila?" He then asked expressionless.
"Kharosho" I answered questioning my pronunciation. "A u vas?"
"Normana" He replied. After a short pause... "blah blah blah nyet blah pashol nahooie blah eta blah blah sivodnya?"
"I don't fucking know what you just said man" I replied as I resorted back to native tongue and not my typical native tongue as that would have sounded more like
"Hay, anywaycse... dat sound crazy talk. Fkem-eye sposed ta-no?"

My laughter provoked assistance from the technical translator known to us as Stas.

hmmm.. Hockey I am missing.I am working on a playoff beard though. If I feel so inclined I may get up at 5:30 to stream Team 1040 and listen in on the bums. I also hear my buddy Brad is bagging some goals out east too in his playoffs. Amazing what happens when you are allowed to actually "play" hockey.

Weird news.Thankfully we didn't tour the Kremlin today...

http://www.mytelus.com/ncp_news/article.en.do?pn=world&articleID=2614747

We were there a week and a half ago throwing money around. Literally. I hope the beggars didn't get trampled. I can't say the same for the pushy junk peddlers.
"Why Nyet spasiba? Come buy Russian souvenirs?" Some of them you feel like doing a little nyet spasiba their noses flat to their faces.

So, on to reading again. I am motivated by some Lamb of God blasting into both ears. Thank god for Ipod. Some would think that this would negatively impact my thinking ability, but for some reason I am reading really fast and my head is bobbing a little. It is all good.

Talk to you all soon.

RJDK

I have a shower curtain!!!!

We made it to Zheleznogorsk. Funny how it doesn't feel like I left. Here is how it went after the train ride...

We arrived at 6:48 and 38 seconds at the train station and made our way to the minibus van thing waiting for us. Short trip and we were at the hotel so we could check into our rooms and get cleaned up a little. We then piled in to the all familiar bus and ventured out to the mine site. Our morning was very hectic and we were scrambling to piece together where to start and where others had left us off. The office quickly filled with varying people all varying in their opinions as to what we should be doing. One particular fellow wasted a bunch of the chief's time with "plan" questions and essentially made for lost time. He was asked to leave us alone and to actually never return.

A site orientation followed for the newbie and I took him on a tour of the plant to show him what we'd be working on. We cut our day short at 3:00 and went back to the hotel to get settled in.

Saturday and Sunday was a holiday weekend for most back home, but as we were in a totally separate fundamental bible belt, Easter was a holiday much the same as Valentine's Day or Halloween. Recognized, but not celebrated as a holiday. We worked all weekend and endured meetings of the minds to evaluate, formulate, investigate and many other -ate words. If not for the 15 hours of sleep Saturday night, Sunday would have been painful.

So far we have been only eating, sleeping and working. Monday was no different. Somehow I ended up getting corned by the aforementioned "plan" questions guy and offered my two cents. My answers did not seem to be sufficient for him which begat question after question after stupid remark after stupid question after braindead reasoning before I passed all responsibility on to commander in chief. Unfortunately the commander was in the hotel with seared salmon flu and was personally greeted by the same "plan" question guy. He ended up with the nickname Jackoff. Jackoff was then told to nu yevo nahooie (F-off in Russian - I have mastered that one) but continues to ignore the requests and is apparently too stupid to know how irritating he is. Stupid can't recognize self-stupidity I guess. I know he is stupid and I could always be smarter.

We plugged away at our nagging issues and tried to make progress. So, other than the job, we are not doing much else. It snowed here today and was hovering around freezing. I packed for the temperature I remembered being in before I left the first time. No dice. I am wearing an extra shirt, but really it isn't too bad. Just wet and snowing.

I promise I won't bore you with job details.

But, that is all we have been doing is working and is in the forefront of my head. Second to wishing I was home and this prison sentence would end. It isn't that bad honestly. Just have lots to do....

Welcome to Moscow...

this was my view from the 16th floor of the Belgrad hotel. A deal at twice the price. Room and breakfast came to 7181 Rubels. 22 Rubels to our Canadian peso makes for... $326.41 for one night.

Tired as all hell, we just got to the hotel that night and slept. It was after midnight is all I remember. We had our driver arrange to have us picked up for 11:00 the next morning.

We got up and ventured to the third floor for a buffet breakfast only to be surrounded by white collars and suits. I cared very little of the big huge pig I made of myself eating two full plates of food. 13 minutes later we were done breakfast and got out of there. I took a few more pictures from the room and got my things together. Thought I would show off my Russian style Chicago roll...



A pile of money I would keep close to my balls at all times. Right next to my passport.

So, we were met fashionably late by our driver and he toured in circles to the office of our contact people. Being that nobody had a plan of any sort we were greeted with "Hello, what are you doing here?" Confused we explained we needed train tickets and would gladly come back later after business hours to have dinner with one of the bosses. Turns out he was going to be traveling with us. Last minute plans aren't beyond him either I suppose.

So, we killed the afternoon touring Moscow (now that I am a seasoned veteran) and went to Red Square. The sky was as blue as a blue sky (how poetic?) and we wandered around side stepping the old beggars and young souvenir salesman.

We made a short video on how fast your wish coins become "SCRAMBLES". Less than 2 seconds I figured and sure enough. If they were younger and more nimble it would have been less than two. So, the thing goes like this... people stand by this star by Red Square (apparently the marker for all destinations to be measured from - citation needed) and make a wish and drop their coins. Much like any wishing well in the world, but.. as soon as the ching of a coin hit the ground, there is a group of people scurrying in to grab it up... so enjoy the video..



After a complete loop of Red Square, down Arbat St. and a venture through GUM shopping mall, we were met by our driver to take us back to the office. We met up with the boss and he took us out for dinner. We chatted, drank a beer and had a customary shot of vodka naturally. A short walk back to the office, we then were treated to the difference between nice cold vodka and mediocre warm vodka. No comparison. Cold it is and always will be.

So, to make a longer story longer.. we made our way to the train and seemed completely effortless the second time. Even easier with someone that has done it many times. One more beer for the road and that was to help us to sleep. Octagonal wheels said otherwise. I slep a whole hour or two, but not much.

If I missed anything, then read the train post back a couple months and that will describe it. More or less the identical trip from there.

We made it...

Much like the last trip (read back a few posts) we made our way to Russia via Frankfurt. We had seven hours to kill in Frankfurt so we hopped on the Flughafen something or other and went to Mainz to walk around. Without trying to venture to far and away from the train station we meandered through town only to find ourselves in the maze better known as Mainz. We found ourselves enlightened by the scenery and architecture of Europe.

After an hour or so of walking, we decided to find a watering hole for a beer and came across a pub filled with locals. seemed safe enough to eat at, so we had ourselves a pint and some bratwurst. Why not?

After considering to eat and run, we finally were able to pay our bill and be on our merry way back to the train station to go back to the airport. We navigated a left and an extra right turn for sure, but we made our way back with little trouble. We had only 26 minutes of train ride and but it let us see the area rather efficiently.



So back at the airport and we just hung out window shopping duty free and took the time to get acquainted with another travelling companion.

Off to Moscow...again...