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Published: July 13th 2009
The security that is actually here, on site, is quite good. We often have a uniformed securty guard with a shotgun, then we have 2 plains clothes ex-army guys with hand guns that shadow us everywhere. We also have a squad or two of Philipine Army who follow us around when we're surveying in the mountains.
We had one incident where a landowner who had already agreed to let us survey on his land changed his mind, or wanted more money, or something. Pretty soon, all the army guys had surrounded him and sat watching him. We still had to stop working for the day and let the community relations guy settle it.
A typical day on this job begins at 5:30am. We have breakfast at a diner type place attached to our hotel. Then we pack up the gear and are ready to go at 6am. Hopefully our box lunches are ready and we leave. It takes about 2.5 hours to drive from Digos City to Kimlawis and then as far in on the logging road as we can make it. The roads are pretty steep and very muddy. After a rainy day there are multiple landslides all
along the road and we always get stuck in the mud.
We leave the trucks behind and hike for 30-45 minutes till we get to the cut line. Then we set up the instrument and let it run for 2-3 hours. This means we get a 2-3 break to sleep or read. I've been practicing the harmonica a fair bit. After the reading is done we move the cables and the gear, or if it's too late we pack up and head home. We try and head back to town around 3pm so we get back to the hotel by 6:30pm. So the amount of time we're actually in the field working is very small, but the total day is pretty long. Usually around 12 hours and then there is some paperwork/data stuff to do after dinner.
It's pretty sweet staying in Digos City. Our Hotel is pretty good, one of the better ones in town. The food is really good. Our crew (8 or 10 people) order a big banquet of food every night and we have real Philippino food. This part of the Phillipines is famous for exporting tuna and tuna sashimi and it's a big
agricultural area. We get fresh mangoes and fresh mangoes shakes every day. Sometimes the crew will cook fresh corn on the fire in the field for lunch.
We should be done sometime in early August, I'm looking forward to that Business class flight home already.
Andrew
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anonymous
non-member comment
Ack, so jealous! Glad I was randomly cruising my bookmarks, since I didn't realize you still wrote here :). I have to say, if you are waking up at 5:30 then its pretty much necessary to have the 2 hour geo-nap. Hell, I took that half the time when they had me waking up at 7. Are you going to vacation a bit after the job is done? May as well put the company flight home to good use right ? :).