I've been a little busy.........

Well, I haven't posted in a bit, I've had a lot to do and just haven't found the time :-)

I have officially moved into my new apartment! It's in Beaconsfield (South Fremantle), at 250 Hampton Road. I have one more shelf to assemble (my giant 6' x 6' one) and then I will be able to finish unpacking! I purchased a very long sofa as well as bedroom furniture so I think I am set for furniture now, yay.

Since I last posted things have been good, work is still interesting. I am on diamond drilling until further notice / end of our financial year I think (that's in June here). And it's probably the best way for me to learn the rocks - chip samples just do not cut it.

My last couple breaks have been busy, just getting myself moved in and settled in the new place. I have lovely upstairs neighbors - Bronwyn and Claire - who are very helpful and lots of fun :-) They have an American roommate, Joey, who is moving back to the states in a couple weeks, his replacement, Ross, is staying at my place until Joey leaves.

I just had an interesting break, played cricket - it is a ridiculous game, don't even bother. And spent way tomuch time trying to get an Internet hookup with Telstra - worst plan ever, at one point I was too angry to drive and that never happens with me. Seriously, one thing Canada has the Aussie's beat on hands down? Customer service. Honestly, Telus is less annoying than Telstra, it's pretty shocking.

Well I better try and get some more sleep, I woke up at 1am and decided to do this instead of computer games and now i'm feeling sleepy, yay!

Byeeeeeeeeee!

Kimmy

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Well, now I'm Bored

Mobile Blogging from here.

So I am trying out my iBlogger application, my iphone has some handy tricks to it :-)

It's Sunday here and I only have 2.5 days of work left, yay! I've been on diamond rigs this swing and its been ...... a little boring, mostly because it's not as field based - you log in the core shed, not at the drill and there's little or no QAQC to deal with outside of core block issues. So, not nearly as fun. Also, I'm working with Igo, really nice but not the same fun level as Kjestine or Sarah or Jesse or Stewart.

I'm still waiting to here about the place in Fremantle, but it looks pretty good! The land lady was trying to get ahold of my boss today for my reference check, so I should know for sure right away :-)

And now I'm going to try and post this, hope it works. Byeeeeeeeee!

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Okay, so I've had a good break and am heading back to work tomorrow. I'm learning diamonds rigs this swing, so I may actually have something to contribute, haha. RC is kind of fun, but I'm not much help unless someone is actively training me.

I've had a busy break, a couple driving lessons with Sleiman (yes that is his actual name, it's not just beer, heh). And I should need just a couple more before I'm good to go for driving stick.

I also had an evening out on Saturday, it was interesting. But very, very drunken. We managed to get around to 5 or 6 bars, which was quite a bit of work but we managed :-) Most of the work came from getting to Perth from Fremantle to get to more bars, but I've had practice with long distance bar hopping before.

It made the next day on Rottnest a little painful, but I toughed it out. It's a pretty cool place, gorgeous and laid back, I need to go back for a couple days, do the bike rental stuff and visit the more secluded west end beaches and coves. The whole island is only 10 or 12 km long so it's not a big deal to bike. The photo is one of the many coves, it actually made me want to go swimming. Weird.






One of my tours on Rottnest was a boat tour with underwater views - so cool. I am still trying to get scuba diving lessons sorted, but until then this can tide me over. This is one of the wrecks we went past, a little creepy but pretty cool.








There were also fish, this one was grumpy. They told us what they were, I have forgotten. I'm okay with it.











These were less grumpy, but not exactly friendly. More concerned with finding dinner I guess :-)












The day was gorgeous, the trip back from the boat tour had some good views of the island. Look at all the pretty beaches Cristen! I have finally posted beach pictures, Cristen should be happy.










I just put this one is because the water colour is so nice. I need to go back here just to go swimming, yay!











I also managed to view, and hopefully rent, an apartment this break. it's in South Fremantle (Beaconsfield), a 2 bedroom which I have no intention of sharing. I'm just not a sharing kind of person about some things. But it does mean I will have an extra room for people to come visit, yay!

The place has ridiculously high ceiling, 15 feet I'm guessing, it's pretty nice. If you want to google it it's 250 Hampton Road, Beaconsfield, Perth, notice how close it is to the beach? Haha. The downside is, I have to buy my own fridge, it's not that big of a problem really, and I need a washing machine, but a friend of mine lives upstairs from me (one of the big reasons I was interested in the place - not many friends here so I may as well hang around the ones I do have, haha) and says I can use their washing machine if I need it, so not too many problems. The landlady seems really nice, and understands about the geologist lifestyle (she's a surveyor, kind of a kissing cousin to field geologists), so is not worried about my weird schedule. The place doesn't have a pool, but I live near the beach, so I really don't care about that :-)

And now I am off to get ready for heading back to work tomorrow. Mostly it's annoying packing, and getting to bed early for my early flight, yay.......

Talk to you all later.........

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.

I've had a BUSY Week and a half...

So since the last time I posted I've been to a conference/forum for the Iron Ore, Western Australia arm of BHP. Been to work for a few days and come back to Perth for my break before getting into my shifts. The conference was held at "The Vines" out in the vineyard-heavy area of Perth (sort of). I've got a picture of the vineyard just outside the patio doors of my room below.

I stayed at The Vines resort and got to spend 3 days going to talks, drinking, participating in team building activities (ie. look like a moron games, think university Orientation but with grown ups) and meeting the other people who work for BHP Iron Ore. It was a lot of fun!

I got to meet alot of the people I will be working with/for, many of them were not from Australia, even a few Canadians! I even won a PS3 on the second night :-) It's very pretty and fancy...... but I don't play video games...... think I can trade it in for a Wii?

I had a day and a half to recuperate before heading up to Newman. Funny thing, I arrived amidst the first rain of the year. Lots of rain. The tail end of a cyclone I'm told. I have the BEST timing! It was good though, the rain cooled things down a bit, it was the first day under 40C that month!

My new boss, Margaret, picked me up from the airport and took me to my new home away from home! Eco-Unit 18 at the Eco-Units on Gun Club Road. It is larger and nicer than my apartment in Vancouver. Well nicer on the inside, it's not near anything in town and I need to get picked up and dropped off every day. On the up side, someone picks me up or drops me off every day. I am a little spoiled. I eat at the Caravan Park Mess, and work in the offices on the Mt. Whaleback site or in the field.

The drills weren't up and running in the area I work in, maybe by the time I get back out there...

So I spent my 2.5 days at work going through various Inductions and getting my kit sorted out. They issue each of us a bunch of stuff, 4 BRIGHT ORANGE work shirts, some work khaki's, steel toed boots, and some other safety equipment. The shirts are very, very, very, bright. Here's a picture. And those white stripes are actually reflective strips. Oh yeah, we are HOT.

For the non-geologists out there, we are all staring at our feet because we are looking at rocks. This is our job. Yes, we are paid for this. And it is awesome.

On the filed trip we went looking at a few different formations and getting the new people (there were...... 4 or 5 of us that started in the last month or two) oriented in the rock package.

This is about standard topography in the Pilbarra or Hammersley provinces. You should check out what is called a valley.....

Oh yes, this is one of the valleys...... the picure to the left. I know, easy to miss, it's right in the middle of the picture, that slight depression...... Yup. That's a valley.

It isn't all quite this flat, there are little "mountain" ranges (that make the Yukon look positively terrifying in comparison) and interesting features like Ando's Crack. Yes someone named something Ando's Crack. Please insert your own joke here, there are too many for me to choose.


Ando's Crack was the second portion of our field trip, by this point I was getting a little stressed from the heat - though I am aclimatizing - and I didn't get as much out of it as might of. Seriously, I was sweating faster than I could drink water, it was HOT.

Ando's Crack was actually pretty cool, as you can see from these pictures:

This is the entrance, and the lovely tree blocking the way so our vehicles couldn't get in any farther.

I took pictures of some of the fauna in there but none turned out but here's a list: Tadpoles, 10's of thousands of tadpoles, all tiny and all creepy. 2 cute little lizards that run on their hind legs, adorable! One baby Monitor Lizard, apparently they have pointy bits. 100's of thousands of tiny, creepy caterpillars, at least i think they were caterpillars. They were gross. One dead snake , eaten snake, also gross. Yummy!

This one is for all the geologists out there, it is the hinge zone of an anticline, plainy visible, or at least it was at the time, here.... well, you'll have to trust me. This is also called "The Cathedral". I think. I was getting a little punchy by then and just wanted to leave so the name may or may not be correct.







And this is the view as we leave Ando's Crack. There are no people in it because I am in front of everyone because I really want to get the hell outta there.

I spent the rest of the day with a headache and acting a little weird. I may have to apologize to a couple people on Wednesday.

Well, maybe not apologize, one of them really bugs me - told me I wasn't a REAL geologist because I do exploration. He's a mining geo. I pointed out about 10 ways in which he is actually an engineer and left as soon as my bags came. I won't be apologizing to him. This is might be bad manners, but he started it.

So after getting "home", and by home I mean back to my hotel/apartment that has staff coming into all the freaking time - it's weird - I slept off the sun issues, and then went shopping the next day.

Shopping!!!! I got myself a cute little iPhone which is way more fun than it should be, I kind of love it. And I may name it. I've put the new number in my Facebook profile for people who need it and sent out emails with it. If you didn't get an email and feel i have slighted you.... well, the computer likes me most of the time but not all of the time. There were a few I had to resend or got error messages with the email addresses I was using. So..... it's not my fault, I swear. Love you!

And today I spent my day getting orientated to the rest of Perth and surrounding subburbs. The SIRVA lady even took me to look at a few places for rent. I think I like the Subiaco neighborhood the best - it's not close to the water but it feels more like home. And I think having beach people around all the time might piss me off, so it's best if I stay away from there.

I even looked at a place in Mount Lawley that, if it's available in April, I would actually rent. It's what they call a "villa" here, ground floor only, is one of 5 villa's that are part of the same building. For clarity, if there were only 2 places it would be called a duplex but there are 5.

And now I am tired. And almost over my annoying cold! So I am not going to push it staying up too late (I've been up since 5:45am). Later people!

Kimmy

I made it to Perth

So I made it to Perth, it's pretty warm here - being their summer - but it's not too bad. Jet lag comes in handy sometimes, I'm up very early and get to enjoy the cool of the early morning while I putter around getting stuff done and do errands. Once afternoon get's here it's way too hot for me. I think I'll get used to it but it may take a couple weeks :-)

My flights over here from Canada were..... hectic. I arrived at the opposite end LAX (LA Airport) from where I had to catch my flight to Sydney, and LAX is a very larde airport. As well, I had to pick up all of my luggage to change airlines due to problem with the way it was booked by the travel company, getting it from one end of the terminal to the other was an adventure and I got a few funny looks - I had alot of luggage. I was VERY relieved to see the Qantas signs as I was nearly in the parking lot by the time I found it, haha.

I missed my flight from Sydney to Perth by 15min (between a late flight arrival, very long line ups at customs and getting a little lost) and got moved back to one a few hours later. Which was actually lucky, I was sitting with a policeman from Perth who managed to allay my fears about moving to Perth. Telling me funny story's and giving advice about where to go and where not too. Made me feel quite a bit better to talk to someone about how things run here, and get good recommendations on local beer's. And I guess I have to live north of the river, he was quite clear about that, dangerous south of the river I suppose, haha. He's never been to Edmonton I guess.

I'm staying at a hotel downtown in Perth, just off the river. I'm booked in at the Grand Medina for the next 3 months. My suite is a one bedroom apartment, larger than my place in Vancouver by a good bit, heh. Pretty nice place but hippy/trendy feeling you get in Vancouver, no matter the time of day, people out in casual clothes walking the sea-wall or out and about, Perth is more conservative, lots of business wear down here. Or maybe that's just the immediate few blocks.

Today I going on my "Orientation" arranged by the relocation people. It starts at 9:30am, and as I've been up since 4am it will interfere with lunch, or what my stomache thinks is lunch, haha, this is the downside to jetlag.