The following has been written by an overtired and kind of exhausted/little bit drunk geologist, it should not be used against her in later proceedings......... Oh, and there's swearing.

Hi People! So I have successfully completed my second swing in Newman. I've rediscovered a couple things about myself:
1. People who freak out pointlessly bug me. OMG, just take a deep breath and deal with the problem instead of screeching like a 13 year old who's parents have just taken their cell phone away, I know, doing something useful, crazy idea.
2. Females who search endlessly for male recognition and validation bug me ALOT. Not to slam on any of the guys I call friend or family, truely. But females who need a dude to verify that their existence has meaning and/or their work is worthy need to shut up, sit down and pull their heads out of their *ss*s. I mean, this is the 21st century, a penis does not make them any better or worse, it just means they get to pee standing up. It's not THAT special. Oh and anyone who takes issue with that? You know where you can shove your head, just go to the corner for a little privacy.
3. There are many fun people to hang with, but maybe not to work with. Yeah, you know who you are.

Also, I discovered what can only be described as the progeny wrought of a wrong and twisted pairing of Hawkins cheesies and a Mr. Noodle - chicken flavour. It's called Twisties (again, chicken flavour), and it's fascinating and horrible all at the same time! Honestly, I'll try and remember to bring some home as an exhibit so people in Canada can experience this and realise that yes, evil is alive and well in the world and has begun corrupting Australian snack foods. Cause, seriousl, it's gross.

And why is everything here chicken flavour? It's weird and gross, I do not want ANY snack food to be meat flavoured! Pork rinds are gross too, but at least they are on a theme, here it's chips and stuff. Entirely too weird to contemplate.

Work was good, I am adjusting to the heat, yay! 20C feels cool to me now and 30C feels nice. I am going to freeze to death when I come home for Christmas....... someone needs to meet me at the airport with a parka, thermal underwear and at least 2 sweaters. That means you two sisters dearest! I'll bring back goodies in recompence, I swear.

Hhhhhm, what else...... I have an Australian Drivers License now, yay! Along with my bank account, cell phone and other assorted bits of plastic I am beginning to feel like I might actually reside here! It's a little weird.

And unfortunately the roommate of the nice Canadian metallurgist I was going to move in with has had a contract extension, so now I will have to find a real place, all by myself. Bah, humbug! This is not the worst thing in the world but it means a lot of work, which is annoying. And I was hoping to get a place with a roommate so I could avoid leaving my house empty over half the time, it feels like a bit of a waste.......

Okay, so I know there are no pics and this is a little short an glib, I'm just in from Newman and am a little tired, haha. I will do a better post before I head back out to camp, hopefully with pics this time!

Bye for now!

All right, the internet hates me so I can't post pics right now, I will try to get them on Facebook though, so check there.

Okay so I have finished my first full shift or “swing” at work in Newman. It’s hot there. Quite pretty, but very hot. And just to make things even hotter, we have interesting PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) requirements, not the least of which is long pants, long sleeve shirts and steel toed boots. It’s not really all that bad, without the long sleeves and pants I'd probably burn to a crisp sunblock or not, but it takes some getting used to.

I did get heat stress or sickness in the “normal” course of my job, but it was fairly mild - a little stomach cramping and headaches. I have normal in quotes in the last sentence because I am still being trained and I think the training geologist (Bryce) was looking out for me a bit – we had some extended yute-time with the air conditioner on. Yay for air conditioning! Bryce was also our driver, as I am not allowed to drive on site just yet - there was a 45min drive from site to camp and I often napped, Bryce was a little bitter ;-)

Oh, and a yute (I think that’s how it is spelled) is what we use for work vehicles here. Smaller than a truck, with a wider open bed that has sides that can be lowered on 3 sides instead of one. Interesting but nearly as much fun as an F-350. Mmmmmmmmm, F-350. So pretty……..

So in my 9 days on the job I had training on 4 of them, spent ~5 running around drill pads and learning how to log chips and sit the drill, RC style. I got very dirty. Very very dirty. The dirt here is very red and fine, it blows around easily. Now mix that with the constant sweat brought on by 40C temperatures (30C now feels reasonable or cool to me) and a job that requires digging around in freshly pulverized rock and dirt most of the day……. I end up very, very dirty. It’s kind of awesome.

So in my working group I have Margaret, my boss, Nathalie a more senior geologist, Camilla, our lone boy, Stewart, and myself. Stewart is very out numbered and envied in some corners - he's turning 23 soon, hehe, we will warp his view of women, I am sure. The other working groups have more guys than ours does; we seem to be the anomaly.

On my break I managed to get out and be social, going out to the bars on Friday - people dress up here, alot. A lot of dresses and VERY high heels. Seriously, the shoes you get here are what I've been calling "tranny hooker shoes" - platform spike heels, often in rainbow metallics of with an S&M flavour to them. Honestly, I'v met a couple transvestite "hostesses" who would go nuts for this stuff. Gotta love living in Vancouver.

So I went shopping - bought terribly tall shoes, looked at dresses and managed to get .... used to the idea of dressing up. I don't like it, but I'll consider it. Seriously though? What the hell happened to going to a pub, and getting a beer? All that requires is ........ jeans, and maybe a nicer shirt, possibly cute shoes. I like Australia, but this is going to irritate the f*ck out of me. There was a whole conversation with the girls I went out with about how often you wash hair - and it was not about it being clean, it was about how to style it and how you know you need to wash it when the curls get matted. WTF?!?!?!?!?! I'm sure they are quite nice, really.

I also managed to get out to Fremantle to hang out with a friend (of the normal variety) on Sunday. There were beers in the micro-brewery and shopping for ridiculous t-shirts and silly dresses. Much more my speed. I was with a friend I met in my gravel road driving class last break, she's quite nice and very snarky about other peoples clothing issues. I felt quite at home :-)

I also got some settling in things done on my break - got my first Aussie credit card, got my Aussie drivers licence, had my cultural introduction training for Australia and booked my tickets home for Heather's wedding in July. I feel quite accomplished right now, haha.

Well, I think that's it for now, I am off to camp tomorrow and I will try and figure out how to blog posts from my iPhone - I think it's possible, heh - so I can keep these things a little shorter.

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeee.