Yesterday was mud-day, today is white winter day!

Today's view from the office...

It has been around 0 degrees for some weeks now, and the mud is melting. And two days ago we got some rain/slid, so yesterday was a complete mess… mud everywhere and brown water everywhere…
But this morning when K and K walked out in to the back yards to a totally white and beautiful scenery.
Kristin and Kristine are now roommates. Catrin's rotation is one week off of our rotation, so she leaves a week before us, so I offered her room to Kristin as she is staying some days extra, and her back to back moved into their apartment. Nice to have a roommate again!
But tomorrow I go home, so Kristin can have Casa C&K for herself for the rest of the week. I can imagine great parties in 1113 when C&K are away… Have fun!! The wine and vodka is in the cabinet in the hallway….!! And the champaign is in the fridge…!

Local shashlik place

We took our visitors to the local kebab/shashlik place just down the street from our apartment building. Mission for the night: Local shashlik and vodka, with a beer now and then… And we all agreed, it was a great Monday night!
We got our own room in the back of the restaurant, a clever move by the girl that worked there. We were pretty loud after a while… 2 guest from Norway, 2 Scots, 1 Canadian, 3 Norwegian girls, great combo!
The girl at the restaurant did not speak a word English, but I must say, Kristin and I managed to order food and drinks for all 8 of us in "Russian", and we even got what we thought we ordered, pretty good!! It took quite some time to get the food, but we spent the time wisely, enjoyed the complimentary bread and dip, and had a couple of decanters of vodka… we made a toast for just about everything possible… The rice, cartoffel purée and the cartoffel fri came 30 min before the meat…. But the meat was great when it eventually came. After we had emptied the restaurant for the best vodka, we had to try the rest on the list, they had 25 different vodkas. The conclusion was that Russian Standard is the best!!

Saturday at the market/bazaar

We have visitors from Norway (Kristen, Anners, Henrik and Trond), so we decided to show them the market. In our lunch-break, we did a quick trip to the market. Always an experience! This is the inside the fruit market-hall.

We did not buy much this time, but Kristin bought a mink hat for her mom and a wolf hat for her brother, and I bought a hand knitted shawl. The lady was so sweet, she told me (in Russian and body language) that she had knitted it herself, and that is it "natural" and "bæææ", and that it is very warm. I told her I really liked the shawl, she smiled and was happy! And that I was from Norway and that it is cold in the winter as well. I made a new friend! Very friendly ladies at the market!

Hello from D Island

I made it out to the Island in the sun!
It is my third day out here now, so far so good. It is good to get some progress and close out work. And also see "the real world" out here, what we are actually building, fixing and working on. It helps me get perspective, and my work make more sense! Not bad!
I have been walking the island back and forth, up and down. It is pretty cold and strong wind out here, so even though the temperature is just minus 15 it is ICE cold due to strong wind. The Caspian is fully frozen up here, solid ice everywhere, but the Island is protected with ice breakers surrounding the island like huge sausages, so the boats and installation is protected from shifts and movements in the ice.

Like any child going to kindergarten, I have double wool long underwear and jumpers, and a coverall, and over that a HUGE winter jacket. And big nice safety boots with grandmas knitted wool socks, so my feet are happy. And on my head I have a wool bank-robber-hood, and helmet and glasses. And mittens. No skin is exposed! Works out great, have not been cold a second! The only problem I have is that it is hard to recognize people when you meet them. It is not until you can read their name on the helmet that you figure out who they are! But then you can also "go undercover" and sneak in wherever you want! Fun fun!!

Ian took some pictures while we were waiting for our helicopter to come and take us back to the main land. The first one is from my cabin, reading a magazine while we were waiting. The two others are from the top deck of the vessel. It was a somewhat mild day, the wind direction changed that day, so the weather changed with about 15 degrees, but I could still only stay out for a minute or so...brrrrr....

Ingvill is leaving us...

The day we all have dreaded has come, Ingvill has left us. We miss you already!

After over 2 years in Kazakhstan, Ingvill decided that the time has come to move on. She has done a tremendous effort down here, and worked extremely hard, and we are so sad to see her go. Hope you have a great last 4 weeks off, enjoy the Olympics, and get some well deserved rest!! We all miss you down here!!

There was of course a proper going away party last weekend for Ingvill at good old Riverside. And Ken played guitar for her, and we all had a great time. And the night before going home there was a little gathering at Caramel. But some did not have the "sense" to go to bed that night, all I can say is that there were some extremely tired project people at work the next day... Need I say more... A proper going away for a great project lady!!

New bridge!

Great new things happen everyday in the glorious city of Atyrau!

The new walkway bridge is complete! So now we can walk safely from the office over to TGI Friday's! Earlier we had to do a kamikaze drill to cross a flexible 3x2 lane road in the middle of an intersection. So it was a pretty good chance of getting a white Lada up close and personal. But now we can walk safely across this glass bridge, pretty nice!! As a little curiosity, when we got up the tiled stairs, a sort of sticky gravel met us. Guess they did not have enough tiles to cover the bridge..

Esso/Lukoil

Today in our lunch break we went on a little trip to the market, Dina Bazaar. And on the way there we passed this great gas station. And today I was lucky, we got stuck in traffic just next to it, so I rolled down the window and got a good photo! It is a shame that a white Lada was not tanking, that would have been too great!

On our way back crossing the Ural river, we saw a white Lada driving down the river! Perfect! Lots of people fishing, and then a Lada driving down at full speed, nice!!

New office chair!

Exciting things have happened in KZ. I got a new office chair! This might sound like a trivial thing, but believe me, it is not!!

The chair story started during the summer. The chairs we have are really bad. And it must be said, that it is a pretty strange thing to be so wrapped up in, but let me tell you, that if you sit 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, totaling 84 hours a week, on a bad chair, I promise you, you will be very interested in chairs! The standard chair we have is so uncomfortable, does not give any support, anywhere, and is hopeless to adjust, and the armrest are to tall, so you can not roll under the desk. They even brake on occasions, and then you have to "sit" almost horizontally under your desk! Nice for sleeping, but not too nice for working… We asked HSE for new chairs, but the answer was vague... very difficult...

To try and amend the situation, we brought back-support cushions from Oslo down with us. That helped a little. Kristin even made the handyman take off the armrests, so she could actually roll the chair under the desk. But on our 4 weeks off the chairs got swapped around and even Kristin's back pillow got "borrowed" away. So we were back to scratch!

But now, all off a sudden, we have a few new chairs! It was only for pregnant girls, and people with back problems! And I got one! Thank you Amalia, I love my new chair! It is so great! You can adjust it, it rolls under the desk, and it even supports your lower back! Fabulous!

Note the pink piece of paper on the right armrest, that is my name tag! Yepp, have to make sure no one takes my new chair!

And if you look closely at "the feet" of the chair you see why the cleaningladies clean our floors several times a day. The fine Atyrau dust is everywhere!

Ice skating in Kazakhstan

Today we went ice skating after work! Fun fun fun!
It was a really nice indoor ice arena, and you could rent skates. Aker had booked it for 1 hour, so we had the whole rink for our selves!

And another exciting thing happened today, Gregor joined the project! Welcome Gregor!!
Here you see, K and K posing with Gregor. (And Jørn and Amalia skating by!)