Year of growth

We got displaced by rising water at the rig site. Here I am, back to the town, anticipating to have some wonderful time for the new year party.

The year will be over soon. It's been a year of phenomenal growth.

A big pay raise. Couldn't be happier over it, well who would not be! Of course, I have to take up a bigger responsibilities. Somebody told: It's a challenge, not a problem. A specialist in the making, how is it not exciting. It does take a lot to be a subject matter expert. Although I sometimes contemplated about a shift of path, but it wouldn't be so within a foreseeable future. I guess I will still continue with the on-the-go lifestyle, jumping around and sleeping over different places, frequent the airports and so on. I only wish to extend my travels to new countries. Keep finger-crossed.    

Investing experience. I put a lion share of my money in the stock market. Over a period of a year, I've seen it hit the high of 13K of paper gain, and then descending to a bit of paper loss to date. No doubt the stock market is highly volatile, burning up all my paper gain was quite unbelievable and it has been a displeasure, but it's less of a concern. The market behaves like pendulum, it will recover my gains, just a matter of time. I'm still injecting money into the account and hope I will achieve 100K by  second quarter next year. Apparently this is quite an experiment to me, as it's a relatively a huge amount of money in the first place, and some people will argue that the market is very risky tool to increase wealth. However, I thought the risk is pretty minimal as I'm in no rush for the money. As I read somewhere: Patience is the only risk. After all, it's something worthy of my time and money.

   

Traveling. The solo trip to Nepal has been an a big motivator for me to want to do more of its kind. It gives me the assurance that it can be done and it's fun. In the foreseeable future, I will have to leave behind everything (as if nothing else matter), take my backpack with me and set out on my journey.

My brother just got married last month. I am happy for him of course. Now problem arises, my parents are bugging me where is my girl friend. A real problem. 

Shit happens from time to time, don't spend much energy dwelling in them. Too many ideas in the pipelinne, all is well to 2014. 

Lately

Certainly I don't come back to this blog space as regularly as I used to be, blame it to the laze.

What's been up lately. Well, pretty much still going around places. Went to work in China (Tian Jin and Beijing) for more than a month. It was a good experience that I got to see firsthand the Chinese way of life than I normally read and hear about. I don't have too much of a problem to try to blend in with them but at times I reluctantly speak because of my "rojak" tougue. After awhile, I was a better mono-linguist. But yea, I don't really fancy working out there, as translations are needed for every piece of documents, which means that I'd have to make a lot of efforts to brush up my broken "Chinese", it may well be my nightmare.  

However, the plan to transfer me to China didn't pull through, feel partly blessed and hence I continue to remain in AP region. Had a work visa to Brazil applied, but unfortunately plenty of jobs are ongoing here right now and we're left shorthanded. Chance to expand my exploration to far West may be not taking place or just yet. Keep hope alive, anyway.

Went to work in Labuan. Took a short trip to KK, went snorkeling at Sapi Island. Pretty relaxing. Then went to work in the isolated and godforsaken jungle nearby Miri, more than 3hrs of boat ride upstream Sungai Baram. Hate to have to share a container with more than 10 men. Similar to the PNG jungle, bugs are everywhere. Have survived about 3 weeks there and so here I'm, back to KL, get days off and going to go back the same location, but I hope a new one. Keep finger crossed.

First solo travel - Nepal

Just returned from my solo travel for leisure for the first time. My trip spanned a duration of 2 weeks, of which 10 days I went hiking around the Annapurna region.

It's a truly enriching experience and I'm convinced enough that I wanna do more things of the sort. I thought Nepal is an awesome place to visit. Apart from being a heavily religious and cultural, the country has an amazing and vast nature to explore. 

I did ask around to see if any of my friends would be interested to tag along, but none seemed to be interested for whatever the reason. So I decided that I'd do it myself. From the point when I touched down the Tribhuvan International Airport of Nepal, I came into contact with complete strangers until the end of my journey. This is one very interesting part about the trip. I got to know all sorts of people of different nationalities including Ecuador, Germany, US, UK, Ukraine, Switzerland, Sweden, Netherlands, South Korean, Malaysian, Japanese, Russian and of course Nepal. Among them, there is teacher, nurse, Nato ground force, DJ in broadcast station, professor, film maker, anthropologist and etc. Everyone at least taught me one thing or two. Many of us tend to make the statement "I'm too old for it", I tell you, you're NOT. 

Going around the places in Nepal, be it the Kathmandu valley, the Pokhara, the mountain area, and also during the transfer/commuting from one point to another, it painted out well to me what sub-standard way of live is about. So if you're still wondering all time how much more money you need to make to be rich, do a site visit in Nepal. I got told that the situation is much worse in India, to which I was struggling quite a bit imagining how miserable the place is. Anyway, money is still imperative, and make sure you've got enough of it.

It's a bloody awesome trip far exceeded my expectation. I stayed at couple of places such as Thamel, Pokhara, and around the mountain. I went hiking with a group of 11 people including the Nepali guide, Mahendra. We went to a waterfall at which time we discovered the attack of leeches. We had to live with the leeches throughout our hiking tour. We got to witness the snow-capped mountain, the Annupurna South and  Machhapuchhre and etc. We went to a hotspring. We had a party night in the middle of jungle. We had little rain during hike. We sat down talking, eating and laughing. I had got awesome photo. We had a cultural dinner. Some people had food poisoning. We checked out the night clubs in Pokhara. We got horses passing right next to us while hiking around the mountain. We made stops at tea house and enjoy scenic nature and the mountain range. We hiked through rocky road, sand road, jungle, grass, paddy field, river, stairs and bridges. We saw plenty of waterfall. We had the Nepali food. I had a very fantastic grilled chicken. Most of us loved the local green chili sauce. We stepped on bull shit. We had beers, the Everest and the Ghorka, and the Nepali whiskey. I did water rafting at Trisuli River. Some did paragliding. I was in the local bus for x hours during which I had no idea where the bus headed to. No one in the bus could speak no English. I had to walk through a neighborhood for about 40 mins from where the bus dropped me to my hotel. I did mountain biking with my guide around the Kathmandu Valley with the #Nepali #Highway and traffic. It's fun though.

Shit had to happen twice that I forget to bring my camera with me as I pushed off to the airport. I had to spend half the cash I'd brought to Nepal to buy another Camera. At first I didn't even bother to activate my credit card to oversea use because I thought I'd have enough of cash anyway. I finished up all my cash towards the end of my trip and I didn't even have enough cash to buy a nasi lemak. I thought that's fucking hilarious as I told the pretty cabin crew that I'd skipped that after asking the price of it. Well, a lesson learned. That makes a funny conclusion to my wonderful solo travel.

Can't wait to go for a second, third, xxxx time....

One of the interesting days

I guess I've taken way too long a break penning down things, haven't I.

Today was remarkably interesting that I've decided to have a record of it here. So I'm back.

In fact, I've had a pretty hectic week. I was attending a one week course, well control, at Park Royal Hotel, Bukit Bintang. On the first day, the instructor, Wayne, wanted every one of us to make a brief self introduction to collect some background information of his students. Of the combined 200 over years of industry experience in the class, I barely contributed 5%. Besides that, I was the only first timer there in the class, while the rest were just needed a re-certification. What it means is that I've got a huge gap to close in.Anyway, I was ready to cook through.

Time lapsed fast. I did my practical test on Thursday on the choke trying to circulate out influx and kill the well while maintaining pressures kind of stuff. So I had two papers to write this morning, one on equipment while the other on on principles and procedures.

Fair enough, here goes how the heck everything that could possibly go awry taking place this morning. I pushed off the LRT station heading the Bukit Bintang. Half way through, I realized that I'd forgotten to bring my calculator, which I needed for the exam. I had to rush back to room.Apparently I didn't have that much of time to waste. It so happened that one of the two lifts in my condo was out of service. I waited impatiently for the lift which stopped at almost every floor. I finally got to my room and rushed back to the lift hoping that it hadn't gone down yet, It just went one floor beyond. Heck that! I thought that I wouldn't want to wait for the lift to make a round trip, I took the stairway from Level 16 all the way down to L2. I thought it would be quicker to ride a cab than taking LRT and then switch over to cab. I headed over to the taxi stand, heck that there's none. Just now there're plenty of cabs. I waited for a while, then the driver told me that he was not going to Bt Bintang, then came the second driver who didn't wanna go as well. I asked whether it's gotta be lots of traffic there, the answer is affirmative.

So I waited no longer but to run to LRT looking like a loser. It's like 30 mins before my exam kick off. I boarded the LRT sweating like hell. Finally got to Ampang Park and immediately hopped on a cab and carry on. Heck that the traffic lights were always in RED. Eventually I got to the exam room JUST in time. Everyone else was looking shocked at me as I used to be the early bird.

So basically I got shit after shit, things got back thereafter. I passed the test. Went to claim a Glenlivet 12 year from Hard Rock. Fix my condo access card. Called my cab for tomorrow early ride to airport. Packed my luggage for the hike, so on so forth.Plenty of things got done.

I hope that I'll have a terrific hike tomorrow. TBC.....

Thoughts of Last Year

Last year was a great one for me. In the course of time, I have had lost plenty of my virginities.


I was down in Papua New Guinea. That's my first time flying chopper, my first time at a drilling site deep in the forest, also my first time doing night shift continuously for 5 weeks.


I finally climbed the Kinabalu Mount. Being a replacement to someone who couldn't make it, I was absolutely unprepared. The climb was tough. It poured on us. We were drenched wet and the temperature was like about 5- 10 deg C. I'm glad I made it. Ticked off one of the items on my to-do list.


Went for Avenged Sevenfold concert at Sunway Surf Beach.


Went for a visit to Shan Tou, China too, taking along my old parents and sister. We arrived in a farmers village. The scenes of the houses, the farms, the neighborhoods are all interesting to me. We traveled to Macao as well, (the Vegas in Asia).

Traveled to Houston, USA for a training and also went for a visit in New York City. Couple of funny encounters. We went to a Chinese restaurant. We checked the bill. There's few coins balance. I told the waitress: Keep the change. She replied, it's too little, no way. Then I topped up few bucks. I got a backpacker room near the China Town, cheap yet very close to the city. It shocked me quite a bit to see how small the room was, just a single bed and and a spot to put my baggage, no fan, and shared bathroom for twenty over occupants i think. I thought it's funny. I will pay a bit more next time if I'm going back. Hahaha. But yea, I was all too tired hoping from one place to another around the NYC. I slept well though. Anyway, NYC has such an amazing skyline. I photographed a lot.


Did a RCD job offshore Sabah in a water depth in excess of 1,000m. We were drilling from a SPAR with and tender barge, West Menang.


Also, did a MPD job offshore Sarawak, Onboard of Ensco 106. My first experience doing basket transfer. Lots of things that I have picked up. Also, spent my Christmas there.


Spent approximately a month in Bangkok, coordinating a job for Chevron. It's like working-traveling experience. Absolutely fallen in love with Bangkok.


It's been a year filled plenty of businesses, quite an awesome deals for me. Hopefully the momentum will maintain.


KEEP FINGER CROSSED for 2013!!!