June 1, 2011

I woke up early, thinking that i might have a chance to actually drill a little bit of hole today. The rig that i am assigned to (we have 4 over here) is new over here from china and has been broke down the last few weeks. It appears that is not going to happen for another day or two. We (the newbies) met up with John Power the local supervisor and decided he would give us a local tour of the work related sights after he had a morning meeting.
 John on the left

 While we waited we had a great $2 cappuccino at a cafe across the street, then decided we would bask in the sun, on the roof.  It is in the mid 20's in Fier today.
A couple of the directional guys i will be working with.

Once John was free the four of us piled into a little crew cab ford ranger and headed over to our shop. it kinda looked like we were entering a prison.

We have a little mwd shop to service our tools, and keep everything working.

After a quick tour of the shop we headed to a local restaurant. Which is owned by a drug dealer who just got busted with 10-15 kilos of heroin. apparently he makes good money as it is referred to as the castle by John.

It was a very impressive building, and i had a really big, very tasty pizza for $6.

After lunch we took a tour of some of the rigs we will be working on. this is a picture of my office where i will spend a good portion of my time over here.

Once we had returned from our tour, i sat down and started this blog. i will try to update as new things happen over here. I will leave you with a few comments made by John on our tour. He is a large biker looking fellow from Newfoundland, and had me laughing for most of the day.

John on driving in Albania :

"Whoever looks shows weakness, so if you don't look, you don't have to stop, if you look you have just given up the right of way" apparently in Albania you just barrel into intersections and hope the other guy stops. Stop signs are also apparently just a suggestion that should be ignored "driving here is just like a nonstop game of chicken".

John on the hospital

"you don't want to go to the hospital, or you will find out why you don't want to be sick in Albania. You come here and get diseases its not the place to get them cured. I'm sure they have hepatitis X over here"

It is time for me to visit the beer fridge, i hope you have enjoyed my ramblings.