nmcoulson

I have been busy, busy, busy with work as of late and I have only just recently obtained the internet so hopefully these updates can be more consistent. Things at the mine have been pretty steady up until now, we have had almost a month and a half of wet weather meaning minimal drilling has been done due to the shear volume of water falling. We were forced not to go into work one day because the dry creek beds swelled up to cover the roads so we got to sleep in. It has been fun yet again to drive around the mine site down old access tracks to check site access. A large portion of the day was spent washing the mud off of our trucks, a testament to how much fun it is to ... read more

Greetings one and all! It has been some time since my last update but I do not apologize at all as I have been having a great time! Let us see. On my last break I managed to get around a fair bit. I had a day or so of relaxing in Brisbane again before I ran down to Surfers Paradise to see my good friend Stuart who had driven up with his brother to help him move into residence for university. We had several nights out on the town and a couple beach days which were awesome. I made some sweet friends down that way as well including one fellow who randomly is a friend of a mate who'd lived in Brisbane last year. After getting Stuart's brother suitably settled in and making him some ... read more

I have successfully returned from my first hitch on the mine site! I am based out of a town called Middlemount in central Queensland working at a coal mine called Oaky Creek owned by Xstratacoal. It produces 10% of the world's coking coal alone! There has been a drill rig assigned to me and I am in charge of the paperwork and the drill crews on the rig. The crews just do their own thing most of the time but I am in charge of telling them when and where to start coring, where to move for their next site, and we communicate a fair bit when there is core coming out of the ground. We are in charge of checking over our paper work, getting necessary checks/tests done to ensure we do not drill into ... read more

Nina finished her exams after we returned from Oslo and we celebrated by making food for her party the next day. We just cooked food all night and had a nice relaxing evening. We got ready for the party the next day and ended up having a full house. Nina had 10 or so friends over for dinner and then her brother had about 20 friends show up for pre drinking then heading out to the bar. Drinking in Norway is expensive, ~$18 CAD for a pint at the bar, so there was lots of drinking going around prior to going out. I learned some Norwegian words you wouldn't learn in a classroom and waited for the Taxis when they were called. I took the most expensive taxi ride of my life. What may have been ... read more

I met up with Nicole for breakfast the next morning and Sheryl joined us from her conference later that day. We spent the day shopping, catching up and then took a nap. We woke up when the fireworks began to go off. We had forgotten to wake up earlier. It was the King of Thailand’s birthday! We ran outside and stood in front of giant screens watching the ceremony, were given yellow candles to light for the King's health and it was amazing to see the whole tourist sector silent except for the screens and to see the whole street glowing in candle light. It didn’t even stop there. We started to walk to where the ceremony was and there were more people in the streets then when the flames had their play off run and ... read more

So very little has happened since my last update. We stayed around in Indonesia another two days then flew to Bangkok. I had to get more tests and then I had to get my medicine then we got the hell out of Indonesia. I really enjoyed most of what I saw but being sick and in that crazy heat wasn't pleasant. I will give it another chance but Bali isn't really a very exciting place since it is expensive and overly busy. Sheryl and I went to a temple called Tanah Lot one night to watch the sunset. It is a temple cut off at high tide and looks quite spectacular but sadly the sun set wasn't that desirable that night so we sat on the beach talking and wandering through shops there. We left the ... read more