First Two Days...

What's shakin, everybody?

Scotty Z reporting live from the Riverview on Mount Street, Perth, Western Australia.  Tis the blogging season once again. Figured I'd scribe a few thoughts now and then like I did when I was in Peru.  So, here goes...

Just as a quick background, I'm working in Perth for the next six to eight months, still with Golder on the geotech engineering for the Chevron Wheatstone Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project which is located about ten clicks southwest of Onslow, WA (WA = Western Australia round here).  Here's a map of the job site.  If you zoom in, you'll see that it's a pretty barren area.  It's underlain by soft, compressible soils and overlain with sand, snakes, and spiders...the kind that you've seen on TV.  I'm not scheduled to visit the site yet...perhaps at some point down the road.  I'm working on a team that'll be cranking out the both onshore and nearshore geotechnics.  The scope of work is ginormous and the amount of engineering data collected that's being collected is quite extensive.  Unlike the Peru gig, nothing is being built yet, this is all front-end engineering.  Same concept, just a different phase of the project.  Friends and colleagues from both the Redmond and Houston offices are on the team as well.  Many of you may remember my friend Nihal...we worked in Peru together...he's here with his family.  Alfonso from Houston is here as well.  I worked with Alfonso on an LNG project a few years back.  Deb is here from the Redmond office too.  In all, there's probably about ten of us who will be doing the engineering work in the office.  I look forward to helping out and I trust that I'll learn a ton.

I've been in Perth for about four days now.  I got into town Wednesday night.  The voyage into town was pretty laid back.  I flew SEA-LAX-AUK-PER on United and Air New Zealand.  Total flight time in the neighborhood of 24 hours...total travel time +/- 34 hours.  Slept 80 percent of the flight time from SEA to AUK.  I didn't get a chance to roam around Auckland, but from what I could see from the airport and flying out, it's beautiful.  My buddy Mark is planning a trip to New Zealand in July-August...I hope to meet him for a few days.  I underestimated the flight time from AUK to PER by about 3 hours, so that sort of stunk, but besides that and United Airlines playing a dirty trick with my baggage weight allowance, everything was smooth and ontime.  I transitioned pretty quickly to the 15-hour time change, but felt a bit sleepy Thursday and Friday afternoons.  It's Sunday afternoon now here in Perth, and feel 100 percent adjusted.

The weather has been as clear as the photo above and the temps have hovered in the mid 70s each day.  They're calling for rain the next few days, so we'll see. Perth is a very clean and well-to-do city from what I've observed so far.  Public transport is everywhere...buses, taxis, trains.  The city and surrounding area is situated atop sand dunes.  There are rolling hills here and there, some steeper than others, with stretches of flat landscape.  All types of trees and plants abound the landscape.  There are some interesting birds flying around the sky too.  Interesting calls and sounds, distinctively different from anything I've heard back in the States.  There are many parks in the area, none bigger than Kings Park.  The office is located just north of the park.  It's perhaps the equivalent to Central Park in NYC.

Besides the strange bird sounds, just about everything here in Perth is the same as any large city back in the US, except the traffic flows in the opposite direction, the water drains counter-clockwise, just about every word is abbreviated, and the electrical plugs are funky.  I learned first-hand about the traffic flow difference.  I was strolling around town Thursday morning and what seemed like a clear shot across the street quickly turned into a mad dash for my life as a city bus was barrelling down towards me.  My first lesson learned here in town:  look RIGHT then look left and repeat no less than three times before taking a step off the sidewalk!

I jumped into the office just to get the ball rolling on Thursday and Friday.  Work officially starts on Monday, 12 April, but I wanted to pop in and meet the folks that are a part of the geotechnical fray.  I also wanted to get my apartment search going in full gear.  Real estate is ridiculously expensive out here. We're granted an allowance and I'm trying to match it to location, bike paths, and Mass times.  I hope to find something soon. A few principals took Nihal, Alfonso, Deb and I out for dinny Thursday night.  I ate a barrimundi fillet.  Barrimundi is a local fish.  Good stuff.   

I brought my rain bike with me and got it set up Friday night.  I took it out yesterday for what I had planned to be a short, easy ride around town. I found myself totally disregarding the fact that I haven't ridden but a time or two the last nine months and wound up logging about 40 miles over rolling hills and partly into a brutal headwind dubbed by the locals as a sea breeze that'd make any Belgian cyclist feel right at home. As I was pondering the vastness of the Indian Ocean, and resting the kicks near Freemantle, I caught sight of a cyclist zipping by and figured I'd see if they were up for some company. I jockeyed around picnic tables and sign posts from the scenic viewpoint and cautiously jumped back onto the road only to see the target a good half "k" up the way. A few lackadasical pedestrians made me light up the brakes to avoid carnage, but I was hell bent on catching that bike...now further away than before...not so much to get to meet someone new at this point, but more so to see if I had any spunk left in the legs after months of near bike solitude. Three or four clicks later, I pulled up along side of a gal named Serena. Turns out Serena is quite the cyclist...strong gal! We rode for a good distance along the coast and had a good chat until I needed to head back east towards the city.  Legs feel remarkably good today, but my arse is sore as hell!

So that about sums up my first few days here in Perth.  I've got a few key objectives that I'd like to accomplish this next week or two, including: 

• Find an apartment
• Buy some sunglasses
• Pick up some groceries
• Buy shammy cream
• Learn the rules to Aussie football (aka "footy") 

I'm heading out to pick up some of them groceries and hopefully find a pair of shades.  The shammy cream may have to wait a few days, unfortunately.  I'll post pictures as I take them to the link you see on the right.  I'm not a picture taker in general, but I'll make sure to get some on there.  Give 'em a look when you have time.  If you're a skyper, my id is sdzajac (I think)...give me a buzz if you want.  

Even though we're half the world away, I'm thinking of family and friends often. Until next time, much love and God bless.

Scotty