Mission on F6

0555hr
Woke up. Twisted and turn.

0600hr
Alarm went off. Snugged in just a little bit.

0615 - 0620hr
Finally dragged myself out of bed. Stretched and cleaned up.

0640hr
Piag all prepared (Wow in only 20 mins!). Made hot drink.

0705hr
Left home for airport.

0715hr
Checked in. Met Kavukz there together with a few others. I think altogether there were 10-12 of us. Went into the departure hall into another room for safety briefing. Girl name Wee (Wii?) played a video and we all found out we're gonna be on the Sikorsky S-92 (pronounced see-kor-skee) chopper. The video mentioned the escape routes in there and I remembered chuckling somewhere in between that made Kavukz hit my hand for some reason. She asked if I was nervous, and I pretty much shocked her when I said no. I mean...really, I wasn't nervous. I'm a happy pig! Didn't it show? Maybe because I looked sleepy. Piagster's brain only functions after 9am. Before that is just...mmmpphh...

0800hr
Took the airport bus to the Layang Layang helibase.

0815hr
Lift off.


You know, I never got the chance to really look at the sea until I'm near enough to see just how DEEP BLUE it was. Arrived F6 after an hour, we had another short briefing by the medic. Filled in some forms, then we had breakfast. I had a really good roti canai with dal curry that it was very convincing about staying the night given some circumstances.

I experienced my first Toolbox meeting (I've always envisioned a meeting inside a box). Nothing serious to talk about except that it's just a "courtesy meeting" before any job starts. So we had Yusri to guide us girls while the rest of the engineers get guided by other men. A Permit To Work was raised so I could take pictures around. Camera flashes are prohibited in work areas. They placed a paper tape on my flashbulb just in case. It was funny. So on we toured...

F6 Production

I really see something related between the two...

And we saw more...

F6P-A, Generator control room, Exhaust fan

There were so many things to know. Yusry explained alot about separating wet gas with glycol and showing which tube is flowing what. Because we were on ear mufflers, Kavukz and I could hardly hear him at times that we just nod our heads anyways. I'm still learning about the structures and processes. I'm a very curious pig and I love asking questions....

Because I'm just that "Empty Tin"...

That's actually a wellhead. Also known as Christmas Tree. I'm not kidding, it's Christmas everyday there. Oh and we also had time to camwhore abit...

Could you even tell if we're smiling?

After that, we had the chance to jump on the standby barge which was called Ajang Hikmah, a barge that fits the capacity of 200 men. That's alot of bachelors we "enlightened". Well, that's what the trainee CSR said. To be more precise, he actually said "Having you both on board is like sunlight to the men". Then we went up to the top floor, called the bridge (I think) and hung around there.

Just so you know, it's not because we're bored or anything. We're just....

We had our lunch after the whole sight-seeing and gosh I was sweating like hell. One of the managers, Janin, took the chance to have a conversation with me.

Janin : Are you married?
Karen : No.
Janin : Is your sister married?
Karen : Nup.
Janin : Why? You people don't like men?
Karen : Too many men.

Janin brought the topic up in front of Kavukz, still having the impression that Kavukz and I don't like men. I must say, Kavukz played a good role in convincing that.

Scandalous...and I hate my hair.

We attended a close-out meeting after lunch, then our chopper came and picked us up at 2:25pm. It was a different chopper now, Sikorsky S-72.

Headin' home...

Arriving home, I was so pooped that I took a nice long shower and masked myself. And I missed my bed.

Aahh, what a day!

Age is a number / F6 Complex

A colleague tried guessing my age today. Her first guess was 28. Sharkey laughed (you laugh, you). It was either I look old....

.....or I talk like aunty.

She was right on second guess *wink*. Go figure.


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Oh, I'm going to F6 Complex platform tomorrow.

Surprise!

I've been cordially invited to join the managers for a Management Day visit. We're gonna do some inspection (I'm guessing topside inspection) in a day's trip. Oo I'm kinda excited. I've been waiting for this moment. =)

How did porky end up going? Answer : Kavukz.

She brought it up during our breakfast 2 days before, telling me there's this day's trip to F6 and her team's looking for someone who'd like to go. My first thought : Opportunity. So yeah, Kavukz discussed it with the logistics guy.

Today, around 2pm...

Kavukz : Karen...sorry to tell you...flight full.
Karen : It's okay...next time then.
Kavukz : Yeah....next time.

And then, around 3:50pm...

Kavukz : KAREN...check your email!! You're coming with me!!


Is this offshore life? LOL...Called Dad so he could announce the news to the Big Boss. You never know if she'll faint if she hears it from me.

Hmm...I gotta do some packin' so....cheerios from me! See you all when I get back!

Did the Piag put Out Of Office mode in her Outlook? Blehh...

So. Much. Food.

I have to say my week has been filled with good food. Especially Mom's lasagna last Thursday was absolutely yum....

Friday was special coz it was Brian's birthday. Ola did the whole "gathering people" thing. At first we suggested to have lunch at Lu Wai Lou. When I found out we've got one Malay colleague coming, I told her "Ui....non-halal. Cannot cannot!". So we had it at Ala-Mak instead. Ala-Mak is popular for their Briyani's.

Lamb Briyani

That was where I first tried Pegaga juice. If you wanna know how it tasted, imagine grass juice. *laughs like hyena* LOL all right, it was still nice to drink.

Kavukz & Charlotte

I admit we made quite a scene teasing the poor birthday boy. There was another team having a farewell lunch at the next table. I bet they er...noticed we're noisy. Anyways, Saturday's his actual birthday celebration.

Happy Birthday Brian. Don't forget my ACV Reporting.

More of that by Kavukz. I'm not able to link her post so go read her entire blog (and leave mine alone, LOL). Hehehe she actually posted that goofy photo of me and her! The camwhore...

*yawn* I'm sleepy. It's Sunday. Tomorrow's Monday. Work time!

Piag on cookery....

I revamped my blog a lil' so it has more space for words. Added more Piggles pictures on top to really oink this place out. *snorts*

I am so non-halal.


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Today I learned how to make Lamb Stew (or soup?).

Ingredients
---------------
Lamb (thawed, chopped/sliced into mouth-able size)
Potatoes (chopped into mouth-able size)
Carrots (sliced)
Bombay Onions (those big purple onions, chopped in quarters)
Beef stock (we used Knorr brand)

Note : All but Knorr Beef Stock is to be washed, okay?


Preparation
---------------
1. Boil lamb in periuk.
2. After 15 mins of boiling, separate lamb from water to remove animal oil/fats, so soup won't give that eeky oil on the surface.
3. Reboil lamb in periuk, adding the potatoes, carrots and bombay onions along with it.
4. Put [oh shit I forgot how many] cubes of Knorr Beef Stock. Stir and leave on average fire until lamb is tender to your liking.
5. Eat.

In between steps 4 & 5, Mom would put the soup in the slow cooker to have all tastes dissolved in one another.

This was made early in the afternoon for dinner. OMG, I was in heaven....


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More than an hour ago, that was like, 2:30am, Mom wanted to make red bean drink for tomorrow morning so she made use of the "awake one" to go outside the house at freakin' 2:30am to cut pandan leaves from the back garden. The moment I came out of the house, little Hunter came jumping and claw-ing me like a cat. I had the impression that Hunter was a cat in his past life.

Anyways, making red bean drink will require a bunch of red beans, honey cubes (it's nicer with this), and pandan leaves for fragrance. Oh and not forgetting periuk and water. Cook on high fire (is that the right way to say it?) for I don't remember how long and serve when ready.


==============================================

I had a friend asking me how to cook kacang ma. Well....

Ingredients
--------------
Chopped chicken
Ginger (skinned and sliced and pounded till there's nice juice comin' out of it)
Shreaded kacangma leaves
Chinese rice wine (sweet one I think?)


Preparation
---------------
1. Heat big sauce pan.
2. Pour appropriate amount of kacangma leaves into sauce pan. Stir and roast until your hands are too tired to do it and go watch tv dry and brown.
3. Add cooking oil, chopped chicken and ginger into sauce pan.
4. Add salt and keep stirring around until chicken meat is around medium rare.
5. Move them into a periuk to prepare it in soup manner.
6. Pour rice wine into periuk. Stir some more.
7. Close lid and leave to boil on slow fire [I presume with slow fire, meat will stay intact].
8. Eat.



So there ya go. 3 simple items to make. And before you get the wrong idea, I wasn't the one cooking. It was all Mom's doing. I've finally established a liking to know how stuff gets done. I call it curiosity.

Nadine : Curiosity kills the cat.
Karen : Well, I'm not a pussy.
Nadine : I said cat....not pussy.
Karen : Close.

It's funny whenever I have conversations with my colleague, Nadine. When I happened to pass by her office area one fine day, and she's taking water from the dispenser, I went...

Karen : Cat...!
Nadine : Pussy..!


Oh how interesting a workplace can be...

I lost my P pad / Friends / Hunter

Try this....

~ut alot of ~eo~le on a dance floor, then ~ress ~lay on your stereo. Start ~ouring drinks around the ~lace while the ~arty is still bangin'.

This is what's going on with my laptop. It couldn't type out the letter "p". Can you imagine everytime there's a word that has the letter "p" in it, I had to Ctrl+V the damn letter????????

Oh and not only that character....the symbols [ and ] .

No....don't tell me. I don't want to change my laptop. But I had thoughts of getting a desktop PC though. The reason I love this laptop is because it's compact, it's an ASUS (yeah I have a thing for ASUS design), and...it's been 5 years I've been coming home to it, for it. I would still like it to be like that.

That's call love, no?


=======================================

I had a cool weekend. Yoyo and Kenix came to Miri for the weekend, together with Vivian and new friend Katherine.

Saturday morning I brought them to Yulee Wantan Mee for a taste of that special wanton mee. After that we were off to Brunei for a sushi feastin' lunch. I somehow don't remember how it happened but happened anyway that I promised Vivian I'd take her out for sushi. That was.... many months ago.

Time gap between the wanton mee and sushi wasn't really far. I must say I had a pretty good appetite that day. We booked seats at Xcapade at 1pm but since we were 20 minutes earlier I thought we'd drop by the beach. KL people don't have the privilege of having a beach that's 10 minutes drive away. Unlike us Mirians.....kekeke...



Yoyo, Kenix, Katherine, Vivian..

It's pretty normal to find familiar Miri faces in Kuala Belait's Xcapade. It's the nearest sushi parlour there is. A friend of mine said it would be one of the tourist's "Miri destination". =)


After-food faces....

It was after this photo that they started to menggatal. Vivian attempted to place her phone on the moving sushi train to take a motion video of us. On 2nd try it was successful. I somehow ruined the video by placing my palm on my forehead, nodding left and right. As I expected, we were being warned....

Friends...you never know when you're part of their crimes...

We headed off to Soon Lee and Supa Save for groceries. Vivian and Katherine had alot of Brunei currency with them....that they spent all on Hello Panda chocolates. LOL...

Coming back, Katherine, Vivian and Yoyo was in the back seat sleeping. I took the liberty to snap their photos in their slumber when we were Q-ing up at the Immigrations. Oh I am so tempted to post them up. But nahh....

And as they say, photographers don't usually end up in photos. But I tried to be the camwhore...


Kenix & I...

When we were back to Miri, headed home, showered, had dinner, then headed out again. Met the gang up again and off we went to Desserts. Evelyn happened to drive down from Kuala Belait that day and met us there too. Vitara vitara....

After Desserts we headed to Coco's to play pool (and drink). Skillz all berkarat already. Katherine won me over by luck. I say it's luck coz we're both pretty rusty too.

Julie and I had special cocktails. Julie had Bossy Girl, which I kept hearing the waitress say Bosinger (as in Bo-sin-jer) until the bill came. I had Spinning Bottle. It was pretty peaceful knowing that we didn't have to go clubbing to be happy.

I was pooped by the time I got home.

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Woke up pretty late in the morning, thinking to go for a haircut with Nige. But parents came home early afternoon with a pup, left it there in the kitchen crying, took Nige and Char away, leaving me and the crying pup there.

Shit...

I thought the pup was WEIRD. I consoled accompanied the pup until it managed to sleep for an hour or so. Came back to the kitchen to see it awake. Brought it to the garden thinking it might want to answer nature's call but hmm....it puked.

It was the afternoon light that made me able to see how fucking adorable this pup was. And it could pose!


Hunter...the poser.

I fell in love with him after 15 minutes!!


After loads of crying


How can you not love those smokey green eyes?

Pig & Shark's medals....

Okay, so we got 2nd runner up in the tournament. We got beaten but somehow....I had alot of fun! The veterans were cheering me and Sharkey. After the match, one of the veterans, Linda, said I looked very determined than the 1st match. I mean....yeah, my first tournament experience in a long long time. They said they were so excited to see new names on the board of players. Linda said "You know, the state player you were playing with just now, she thinks you're cute".

My my my.....

And we're having our names engraved on the walls of the KRP badminton court. Wow...! Will take a snap of it when it's on the Wall Of Fame.

Anyways, here is our achievement in the month of July....2nd runner up in the KRP Closed Badminton Tournament!!







Sharkster, if you're reading this...we make a great team still (only need to team up more often) >=B..