Daily routine on a Barge

I must say that I have the best office in the world (not to mentioned the best job I ever landed myself with). I mean, where else can you be greeted by the beautiful sunrise as you go to work at the begining of the day and yet again catch the beautiful sunset at the end of the day. Smoking a ciggarette at the designated smoking area as the sun goes down, marking yet another good day had gone by. When they say 'Deep Blue Sea', out here is REALLY deep blue sea. Its quite common to catch sight of schools of fish as they swim gracefully around the barge and occasionally you will see dolphins feeding on them. Oh, the life out here is great...

Commuting is also one of the problem we don't face out here offshore. When working on land, I can say an average of one hour for someone to reach the office, maybe more for those who have to send their kids to school. Yes, I am sure you land lovers would have a list of excuses of why you were late this morning and I am sure they were 'valid' reasons too. I can't blame you really. Too many cars, too many dumb duck land lovers. For me, this picture on the right shows my 'highway' to the office. From my cabin, it takes 3 steps forward, a turn to the left, then 5 steps forward and a turn to the right...bingo! If all goes well, I should be reaching my office within 1 minute. On a heavy traffic day, when too many stupid cunts are standing around the hallway, it will take me 3 minutes. And that will be my office-rush day. My shift starts from 0700hrs and it ends at 1900hrs. The barge works 24 hours per day meaning a full 12-hour per day shift and a full 12-hour per night shift. Of course, shift times varies between different positions on the barge. For example, 1100hrs to 2300 hours, or 0600 hours to 1800 hours. Some even have VARYING hours and no definite shift time.

To have the full strenght and concentration for the next day, I would make sure I have the 8 hour sleep I need and wake up roughly around 0630 hrs every morning. I don't really bother going down to the galley for breakfast since I get breakfast sent to me in the office (for example, the picture on the left shows a beef steak sandwich I had for breakfast) and I have all sorts of hot drinks (Horlick, Milo, BOH teabags & Nescafe 3-in-1). I can have them all ready in the pantry...just in front of me in-fact. Most personnel who don't have this luxury of course wakes up a wee bit earlier than me and heads to the galley after showering and after changing to their coveralls. In the galley, you can have pancakes, the wide variaty of cereals, drink all you can fruit juices and hot drinks of choice, an occasional nasi lemak, nasi goreng seafood telur and mee goreng seafood telur.

When the clock strikes the hour, usually havoc of the daily work on a barge will start. During a busy day, well..everyday is a busy day like any other, you can almost compare it to those people working with the stock exchange. I say this because good communication is pretty much needed between co-workers on the barge. Communications between the barge office and personnel working on the deck and vise versa is usually done by using a walkie-talkie. In fact, a Standard Horizon Submersible HX3705 VHF radio. Like what this gentleman is using. It doesn't work like a telephone call however and defnitely not as clear with all the noisy construction and machinery noises in the background. It takes practise to converse and listen with a walkie talkie. A mistake in communication can actually lead to someone's death out here. I am not kidding here, nor am I exhagarating. Communications with the outside world is by telephone and YES, we do have INTERNET on-board. We run a 100MB Broadband line using the VSAT technology which feeds enough power to transmit a long distance telephone call and post up this goddamn blog. Thank God for this too, I can't imagine how hard it was for someone to send a message across to shore a long-long time ago by using a TELEGRAM. What I know from my veteran brother-in-arms is that it takes 3 days for a telegram to reach the shore and an extra 2 days for the message to reach his family at home. But that shit was a long time ago, we have better shit now.

In addition to good communication, personnel working on the barge should have a SHARP mind. I said 'SHOULD' because some personnel here are really stupid cunts! This is particularly useful when decisions have to be made in a split second. Of course some one with a sharp mind, like myself, will always gets his facts and strawberry syrups ready way ahead before the day starts. Times equals money on the barge and the more some dumb duck takes his time to think of his choices to later decide on, the more US dollar is being wasted. In view of this matter, lets look at how SLOW land lover workers would be, for example processing a simple form can take from 1 day to a freaking year...right? Come on, give it up...you know I am right. You don't really give a shit too, besides how much can that form cost the company. The worst it can go is some poor fellow waiting for his car insurance renewed.

With all the special requirements like going off early to pickup children from school, groceries and bill payments, I can't really blame you really. We however, do not have that sort of specialty on that department. What could possibly we be needing to do out here in the middle of the sea other than work?

We also do not 'tai chi' our work to our co-workers around here unlike what some of you land lovers like to do in the office on shore. Even after our shifts are over, we make sure our part is completed PERFECTLY and we do something called a handover for 15 minutes or so and tell the personnel on the next shift what had happened today and what important follow-ups should be done. Office politics are hard to come by offshore and we don't intend to start one. We leave that glamorous work culture to the people working on the shore and think how much of a lame cunt they can be.

And this we do during our lunch and dinner time. Day shift personnel goes for lunch between 1000 hrs till 1200 hrs when the galley doors of heavenly food opens. The galley closes between 1300 hrs till 1600 hrs for cleaning and preparing food for dinner which is then between 1700 hrs till 1900 hrs. Night shift personnel would be having their breakfast at this time, then lunch at 2200 hrs and lastly dinner at 0500 hrs.

After shift and handover, a few things you can do..I might have to stress on the word 'a few' here since the options would be, wash up, watch TV (yes, we have satelite TV for each cabin - on a SAMSUNG flat screen TV), go to the gym (yes, we do have a gym on-board. Its free too, no membership fee), surf on WiFi at the I-Cafe or just writing this blog from my cabin in the middle of the sea. For me, I only have 4 hours to do these things for relaxation but not all of them in one single night. Of course then its sleep time and that strikes a day out from the calendar. Good night...cunts.

Terms & Conditions

After much thought, I think I better start this blog with some offshore terms. In other words, its how we talk at sea. Things are after all, very different around here. To be honest, all these terms did freak me out first time I am on-board a construction barge. As you can see on the picture on the right here. This one is called heavy lift barge.

Moving on, here are just a few of the terms I will be using throughout the blog (In lay-man's terms, for you dumb duck land lovers):

Port side & Starboard side [nautical term]

We can't really call the left side or the right side of a seafaring vessel as it is, cos it can really be confusing. After all, we have nothing around us except the sea. So some clever cunt invented these terms to stop all the confusion. Port side then (in general) became the side of the seafaring vessel that comes alongside the wharf or jetty when the vessel comes to port. The starboard side, of course will be the opposite.

Bow & Stern side [nautical term]

Another nautical term introduced most probably by the same clever cunt who made port side and starboard side. This time however, it means the front or the back of a seafaring vessel. Referring to the picture of the barge above, the stern would be where that big 2400 tonnes crane (orange in color) is sitting and the bow would be on the other end where our accommodation, bridge and helicopter landing deck sits.

Personal Protective Equipment

In short, PPE. Everyone must wear them regardless what you do on the barge. Like what this handsome gentleman on the picture here is wearing. The orange clothing is called coveralls not jumpsuits. Jumpsuits are for the fools flying around in the sky and jumping out with parachutes. Of course, that white thing on his head is called a safety helmet. It will protect the head from small bolts & nuts but of course not from a 200 Ton load. We will discuss further about offshore safety in later issues on this blog. Then there's the safety shoes. Lastly, the safety glasses. It does not just make us look cool (like those actors in the Matrix) but also to protect our eyes from sharp objects and the sorts.

P.O.B.

In full, Personnel/Person on Board. Self explanatory actually but for some dumb ducks, it would be the amount of people working and staying on board the barge and not including the cats, dogs or birds that happen to come along with the ride. The POB for the barge I am working on can go up to a maximum of 226. That's a lot of people contributing their bodily waste into the sea.

Barges

I don't think I really need to go all technical on this topic since I have already posted a picture at the beginning of this post as an example (graphically). If you kinda missed it, kindly scroll up and have a good hard look. I will however tell you that there's different types of barge. As mentioned earlier on, we have a heavy lift barge and then there's a hook-up barge, a pipe-laying barge and a riser barge. More write ups will come about these different types of barges in upcoming issues on this blog.

Also, a barge is not a 'tongkang'. I got some dumb duck of a cunt friends thinking I am working on a 'tongkang'. Well, see it for yourself now and compare to that 'tongkang' you see used to transport sand or rubbish up and down the Satok Bridge River (Kuching). I have never been humiliated in my life!

Cunt

A typical swear word we use at sea. Varies in usage and meaning. There's blardy cunt, hopeless cunt, lame cunt, lazy cunt and of course my personnal favourite, stupid cunt. Its merely a word for expression actually, like an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence. LIKE THIS!!!! for example. It is also used quite normally during play or on serious conversations.

Mess Hall or Galley

This is what land lovers will be calling their dinning hall and kitchen area. We eat here and get fed with good food. Of course, when the food degrades, the cook will have to go and we will get a new one. Menus are divided between Asian food and western food. There are 4 meal times in a day starting from breakfast at 0500hrs and supper at 2200hrs. All the wholesome meals to keep up the energy on a hard days work at sea. Now, it may look like we are eating in some school canteen setup, but we do have the best food around like beef steaks, lamp chops, grilled salmon and most of the western food that will cost us quite a lot back in the land. I will be lying and bragging if I say our menu are exquisite cuisines but I will leave this picture showing what this gentleman have to eat for his dinner. You'll be the judge.

Well, I guess that would be enough for now. Thanks for reading this far though. Stay tune for the next post...more to come.

Home at Sea

Hear ye' land lubbers'

So I have decided to start my own blog. As much excitement I get from reading Mr. Ciaklat's blogs (http://www.ciaklat.blogspot.com/ & http://globalprecession.blogspot.com/) I hope to give much excitement to my fellow bloggers on my newly-started blog.

What am I going to write? Well, mostly to answer the million questions everytime I get when I get home for timeoff which usually pretty much about my offshore working experience. Other than that, I suppose I could vent my offshore frustration by writing . Of course this will be entirely my point of view and things can defer from one offshore worker to another.

I must warn all you fellow bloggers though, there WILL DEFINITELY be swear words on this blog so bear with me. Besides, ever heard people always say "Swear Like A Seaman"? I will however, TRY to minimise these vulgarities. But yeah, if you wanna know about offshore employment and how it feels to be working at sea..well...

Stay Tune & Happy Reading, cunts..

Nuff Said.