Final Post

To wrap things up....

The Mekong flooding got worse, but pulled up *just* shy of inundating Vientiane. Other places were not so lucky, and much land, crop and houses were lost, and people killed as well.

I finished up at PBM and slunk offsite. Had a pretty good round of farewells - wish them all the best.

Got to Australia, and it all got fairly mental with the wedding. In the end, it was brilliant, awesome, and we were very happy. So good to have all our friends and family together in one place like that.

We headed off to Un Zud and had a fantastic and all too short honeymoon. But we did get some skiing in, and some sightseeing, some adventuring and a few thrillseeking Queenstown things.

Arrived in Vietnam and we set about looking for a house, scoring a beut after a couple of days. I headed off to the minesite for my first roster. Three days after arriving on site, we were hit by Typhoon Hagupit, which buried the site. Due to that, and other financial and regulator issues, the decision was made not to go ahead with the operation.

We completed the orepass raisebore, got both portals into ore, and killed it. It was over - before it began. What a shame.

Due to worldwide economic upset, we don't know where we will end up after this. It may be a case of returning to Australia, but there are still possibilities overseas, and Europe is looking like it may be the go. We'll see.

For now, this blog is at an end. I can't see the point, what with Facebook presenting a better means of keeping people posted, and a far better way of distributing photographs.

The photo you see here was the decoration at the top of our wedding cake, painstakingly prepared by Nicoles sister. It is, I'm sure you'll agree, pretty damn awesome.

Cheers,

Curtis Fucking Jones.

Flood

Nic flew out out for Australia today at lunch.  So I'm on my own both in town and on site, for a brief period before I head back to Australia on the 25th.

The Mekong is in flood.  Rains have been continuous and unrelenting for the last couple of weeks, and rumor has it that the Chinese dams upstream have been releasing water recently to avoid overtopping - either by intervention or via spillway.  The end result, well, the Mekong has gotten bigger and bigger and higher and higher.  Last night we went into town for dinner, went to the Highlander - which is a covered bar right on the Mekong.  The lower half of the bar was underwater, and the toilets too.  The river had about two metres to go till it hit the top of the embankment there.  We took some photo's, but Nic took the camera with her to Aussie - so it'll have to wait to pop them up here.

With typical Lao lassitude, the immenent flooding of the Mekong has only become newsworthy in the last two days.  Up until then, nothing.  Public authorities are now declaring they have been ready for months.  Well - still no sandbags, and it overtopped some time this morning and has begun to flood the city proper.  I tried to get to it after lunch, but the police are blocking all roads.  Why? Because that's what police do in Lao - stop traffic and block roads.  The skill-set doesnt go any further than that, not in the majority of cases.  So I parked the bike and went on foot and yeah, sure enough, the river is now inside the city and a long way from over yet.  Once past the police roadblocks, there are no other signs of government presence.  The only activity was lot's and lot's of Lao (and a few sweaty and toey looking Falang) busy shifting furniture and goods up to higher levels of their buildings, and in some cases hauling stuff up onto the roofs.  Other light trucks, tuktuk's and motorbikes are busy hauling gear away.  The only people that look concerned and annoyed are the Falang.  The Lao all think it's a big joke - as usual - and that's not neccessarily a bad frame of mind to be in when your house is going under water.  Out where our house is is probably another two metres higher again, judging by the water level in the nearby canal, which is close to overtopping and is likely to be backed up by the elevated levels of the Mekong.  Now, according to the Mekong River Comission website, the river is currently at a level it was predicted to reach tomorrow, and on the graphs it appears that it's got a long way to go yet.  So I'd be expecting even the area we live in out here to dip it's feet, maybe by the time I have to go to work.  Will have to arrange to be picked up at home, rather than at the office.

I've been reading that the embankments around the city were raised in the 70's, and since then have been cut into, eroded, in some cases removed.  For the last eight years, many people have been saying that 'something should be done'.  Nothing, of course, has been done.

Exit - yet again

Events unfurled as they do, and I find myself once again resigning from a job. Not, however, with any trace of unhappiness this time. Odd that, there should be a smidge of unhappyness, and I'd gone most of the way to convincing myself that I would be saddened to be leaving my Lao guys. But on reflection, I'm not. And it's a good thing. The guys have done well, are doing well, and will do extremely well under the tutalage of Paul, and whomever he instates as his Superintendant. It's all good.

So I've two rosters left to go here, which, what with InControl now embedded and seeing high usage, will revolve mainly around handover and wrapping up ICMC compliance loose ends. And the odd piss up as well.

I'm watching Ben Hur. Been a long while. What an epic movie. Someone needs to make a movie this long again, just for the hell of being able to shuffle together lovely long edits. Pace aside, it's a great bit of film.

Vietnam it is, a nickel / copper mine, all underground, with an excellently high mongrel quotient. Hey, howabout that, at one hour fourty one minutes Charlton Heston channels Laurence of Arabia. Biazzare. Anyway, Vietnam, here we come, Hanoi city. All this, and getting married somewhere in between. Gotta be the busiest time of my life so far, and it's been running at the mid-hectic pace for a lotta years. Gotta be the happiest too :-)

HSE Superintendant at this place. Bit of a stretch, to put an understatement out there on the record.

Really looking forward to our wedding on a lot of levels. AWESOME!

I should be asleep. I was asleep. But my head has been bogged with a rotten cold for the last four days, and I woke up fidgeting unable to get back to sleep. So to the blog we go, and blog we shall. That is the fakest beard I've ever seen on that old geezer in the desert there.

I'm going to turn it all off right here and try the fart sack again, see how we go this time. It's hard sleeping on your own, when you've just gotten used to not, again.

Heroism in it's ordinary form

I came across a story on the web today that will probably dissapear before long. It struck me as a profound example of heroism in it's simplest ordinary form, which is often more remarkable than the shiny popular examples of heroism we tend to pay attention to. I'll let the below text, and the amazing photo, speak for itself.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A man is dead after the car he was driving crashed into the waters of Sydney's Botany Bay today.

The death occurred despite a remarkable rescue attempt by local police officer Bruce Jarvis, who commandeered a mask, flippers and oxygen tank from a local dive shop on his way to the scene, arriving at the location of the accident before the police diving crew.

He said other police officers and some witnesses had already tried to swim out to the car, but the water was too deep for anyone to reach the vehicle without diving equipment.

Without donning a wetsuit he dove 10 metres underwater to reach the car and struggled through the debris to free the driver who was trapped by his seatbelt.

“The current was running and also I was trying not to get myself tangled up with the vehicle on the bottom of the water," he told Sydney radio station 2GB.

Sgt Jarvis managed to free the 40-year-old from the submerged vehicle. The man was taken to St George Hospital in a critical condition but was declared dead shortly after his arrival.

Sargeant Jarvis said he had hoped to save the man because conditions were so cold and that had been known to keep people alive underwater longer.

"(I was) just hoping that we could get a good outcome of helping this gentleman, bearing in mind that it was pretty cold, and you do hear stories of people recovering from when they have been in the cold without oxygen for a while," he said

Sergeant Jarvis said he was underwater for up to ten minutes before finally freeing the man.

He said the water was dark and murky, forcing him to feel his way until he found the driver still strapped in the ute by his seatbelt.

"It was very cold. It was enough to take your breath away."

Initial reports suggested there was a second person in the vehicle, but police later ruled that out.

Sgt Jervis offered his condolences to the man's family.

"Unfortunately it was the only thing we could really do."

One unnamed witness said the driver tried in vain to escape the sinking vehicle.

"He couldn't get out," the woman told Macquarie Radio.

"He was trying to get out, yelling to people.

"There was a man that went to swim to try and help him get him, but by the time he got to him the car had sunk because it had filled up with water."

The utility was reportedly submerged for up to 40 minutes.

The car, which was towing a boat, swerved across three lanes of traffic on General Holmes Drive before plunging down an embankment into the Cooks River at Kyeemagh about 1.15pm, police said.

The ute then became detached from the boat and drifted out into the river where it became submerged in 10-15 metres of water.

Forensic examiners are on the scene.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Sargent Bruce Jarvis strikes me as something of a laconic master of the understatement. I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that this is not how he is expected to respond to emergency situations. You wouldnt find it in his Position Description. Looking around on the web I find that he is a trained St Johns Ambulance diver with an extensive diving background, so he's obviously no neophyte, but still.

Take a look at that picture. Quick thinking guy, grabbing that gear. Cool as a cucumber, by the looks, getting dressed and heading straight in.

He makes it sound pretty easy, but a murky river, ten metres down, cold as fuck, in a hard current, with snags and wreckage - that's a long way from some leisurely finning around a reef up on the Great Barrier. Not to mention, cool or not in the above article, likely to have been under a fair degree of tension and stress while he was doing it.

I'm sure that Sgt Jarvis won't be buying any beers after work for a while, and I've a good feeling that he'll find himself up for a gong or two in the next twelve months. But I think an example of heroism such as this is such an important lesson, it should be taught in schools for the next ten years, and not left to be remembered only by those directly involved and affected.

I'm no fan of the Police Force, most people who know me understand that. But I'm a great and huge fan of Police who do their jobs the way an officer should do their job - and this guy has clearly got whatever the right stuff is, by bucket load after bucket load. Well done Sargent, well done indeed.

Credit to The Daily Telegraph, AAP and journalists Carrie Berdon & Adam Bennet for the above plagarism of their reports.

Something changed

The new Risk Manager has arrived on site, Mr Paul Thompson.  He's a decent man, the perfect person for the role.  PBM is really lucky to have him onboard, really lucky, and I hope he sticks it out. Early impressions, but I'd say he's got stickability.

Vietnam, not sure whats happening there.  Pie in the sky?

Other things happening around other parts of the world, so there's plenty to look towards.

Boring now being on site on my own.  Booooooring.  But I'm working through all them episodes of 'Lost'.  One thing begins to come clear - there *is* no answer!  I could happily kick the doc Jack character in the face, morally uprighteous turd burgler.

InControl has become a large part of my life.  Hell of a database.  Shithouse implementation.  What we're doing now is working, the INX consultant on site is resourceful and helpfull, but the data migration work that was done before was shithouse and has caused more problems than would have been created by hand coding the whole lot in to start with.  Really fucking me off, and the consulatant is looking ragged.  She also had her money knocked off out of her room at the other camp, which is a real fucker.  I would be ropeable.

Other shit, well, the wedding looms ever closer, but other shit is at a standstill.  One of them funny little hiatus periods that life chucks at you.  Aint it a fucker?

Nic is bored and shitted off with the current situation.  Guess we had it too good while on site, being apart is worse than burnt cork.  It's worse than a singed beard.  It's worse than tomato sauce down the front of a fresh shirt.  It's worse than a borrowed mower that just won't fucking start.  It's worse than a stubbed toe.  It's worse than mouldy cheese, when all you want right now is a bloody toasted cheese sandwich.  It's worse than sand in the paint.  It's worse than most of the things out there that really bugger your day.  And it doesnt stop.

Theres that Doctor Jack character again, panting, bug eyed, bleating about some bloody injustice. The man needs a fork thrust into an eyeball, that would really give him something to carry on about.  "Argh, my fucking eye!".  I'm just getting towards the end of Season One, maybe he toughens the fuck up later on and grows a pair of swingers.

Hoo hoo, enough from me.  See you fuckers later.

I give you a photo from Vietnam.  It's a brickworks.  In Lao, everything is made from cement - because they got all the limestone under the sun.  In Vietnam, it's all brick, because they got all the clay that ever existed.

An update - onward and upward with the original titles

Since my bout of anti-gallic spleen (sorry Roussard, you at least don't deserve it), a few things have been going on.  We spent a couple of breaks after my return from Oz just hanging around town, not doing a whole heap.  I had a strange thing happening with my noggin there for a while and went to AEK Udon for an MRI.  Funny thing being inserted into those things.  All negative, and things went back to normal anyway - so no idea but I'm taking it as all good.

We did a trip to Phuket and bummed around in Patong.  Nice place.  Heaps of photos on facebook and stuck one on here for you.  Phuket again in the future definitely, or the Andaman area again anyway, next time a little more adventurous than resort town, It'll come.

Back to site and all manner of weird shit.  My new boss got the shaft through a strange series of events.  He was a bit of a knob, and I don't mean that in a terrible way, he certainly had a lot of good things to offer.  But anyhow, he managed to self destruct in six weeks and now it's back to being an army of one again.  It's pissing me off.  Our new Risk Manager starts in a couple of days, and will be taking on Asset Protection as well.  Things are on the change again - hopefully it will lead to improvement.

Following break I ventured across to Vietnam to take a look at a small and as yet unbuilt underground nickel operation.  Very interesting, a hell of a lot like Kundana of old in concept, although the terrain etc is way different.   Very different group of people, or so I thought at first.  Then I realised - this mob are only looking weird becuase they are not a mob of cock smoking freaks like I've been - alas - used to for the last four years.  This crew are lean, mean and mongrel as all fuck and I liked them immensly.  Knew a couple of them too from Kalgoorlie, typical goldfielder lads and rock solid.  They've got 150 metres developed so far - still virtually in daylight, and a lot of work yet to be done.  It liked what I saw.

The wedding draws ever nearer and preparations appear to be going okay.  I can easily say that, since I'm not preparing a whole lot myself.  Nic is a Trojan.  I'm looking forward to the day, very much.

Nic is no longer working on site, she has been shunted back to Vientiane to finish off her contract plugging away on Aurion - the new HR database that is strangely named after the best most brilliant company I ever worked for in my entire life.  This leaves me somewhat at odds on site - no one to annoy and it's kinda booring.  Thank the maker for DVD's.

The job, the job continues.  There is never a dull moment in that respect, some bad, most good - we fix the majority of them up.  A couple of losers along the way, but that's part of the warp and woof of it.  Workplace injury rehabilitation is a good thing, a worthy thing, and great when it pays off at the end.  Couple of births, couple of the other, there you go.

The Frog Song

If your French and you know it, run away
Cest le Francai, le comprend, escap'e
If your French and you know it
And you feel the need to show it
If your French and you know it
Run away.

If your Dutch and you know it, take of your gear
If your Dutch and you know it, bare your rear
If your Dutch and you know it
You'll always damn well show it
So get it over with, and take off all your gear

If your British and you know it, we'll, your fucked
If your British and you know it - your bad luck
If your a whiney pommy fuckwit
And you cannot help but show it
If your British and you know it
Don't take a bath

If your a Kiwi and you know it, root a sheep
If your a Kiwi and proud of it, go 'bleat bleat'
If your a Kiwi and you know it
Put on gumboots and get to it
If your a Kiwi and you know it
Shag a sheep

If your a Yank, and you know it, open your mouth
If your a Yank, and wish to show it, open your mouth
If your a Yank and want to display it
The best way for you to do it
Is open your mouth, and crap will dribble outta it

If your an Aussie and you know it, wear your thongs
If your an Aussie and you know it, wear your thongs
If your an Aussie and you know it
Then thongs will really show it
If your an Aussie, just remember, 'thongs and bongs'

If your French and you know it, eat some garlic
If your a French chick and you know it, don't shave your legs
If your French and you know it, best be prepared to defend it
'Cause everyone else will want to punch your head in