Brazilian Shorthaake - A Second Helping

Eating salad helps you lose weight.  This is well-known. What may be news to some readers is that eating a salad in a third world country weaponizes the digestive track with greater efficiency than any known Uranium-enrichment process.  If the North Koreans discover this, say goodbye to Seoul.

So I'm sick as a dog thanks to my subtle effort to be healthy, and Macae's unclean public water system.  Rather than do anything daring, like go outside or shave, I'll respond to some FAQ's.  Shorthaake, mailbag edition.  It's worth a shot.

Have you tried this you crybaby?

    No. The line at the Brazillian Walmart is too ridiculous.

Are women in coveralls hot?

                Yes.  It’s an automatic +2.

That garment is called a “cover-all.” It does exactly that. Why is that hot?

                No one knows.  Might be the buttflap.

What’s the demographic make-up of your survival school?

We represent 5 continents  - the roster contains 3 Englishmen, 1 Scot, 1 South African, 2 Indians, a Singaporean, a Malaysian, a Venezuelan, a Mexican and myself.  The English level varies, with the Scotsman obviously offering the least prowess.

                Not surprisingly, my class is entirely male.  I could nearly replace the word “class” with “industry.”  There are a few women engineers/operators in town. I’ve met them both.  They’re quite pleased to be here, as they are treated like royalty when spoken to directly.  They just gradually learn to be treated like raw steak the rest of the time. 

What do they actually teach in survival school?  Do you think you’re cool/tough now?

                In reverse order, no I’ll never be as cool as either of my brothers.

                The course material alternates between the painfully obvious and the undeniably practical.  The course exists merely to cover the collective buttflaps of the various bosses we serve, and to pad the pockets of local businesses at foreigners' expense.  It also involves 30 minute coffee breaks and 2 hour lunches.  This would be fine, if not for my actual work to handle here.

                Topics range from general employment policies, employee rights and other political hoopla to First Aid and proper job planning.  Mouth-to-mouth CPR is no longer recommended, which means I'll need to rethink my seduction of Wendy Peppercorn. Survival swimming is taught in a giant pool and we familiarize ourselves with life-saving equipment and practices.  A firefighting practical and exam conclude the training, and certify us all as adults in some way. We got pins.  Sounds legit.

When are you coming back?

                No one knows.  I embark (take a chopper to the rig) on the 19^th.  The rest is up to god, which is Portuguese for Petrobras.  They run this joint in a gangster-ey way, and I mean pinstriped suit old school gangsters, not Fifty Cent. It's crazy to see a whole town so clearly under the thumb of a single entity not called Walmart.

Do you miss me?

                Of course.

You’re so handsome.

                That’s not a question

Will you return married?

                No, but hopefully engaged.  The Tinder scene here defies description.

How’s your hotel?

I am in a palacial single-bedroom bachelor pad.  This was given to me as a “no hard feelings” after the Corpulent Hooker Chronicles.  This does not help get the noises or visions of the CHC out of my head but it’s a start. 

My employer’s logistics group asked what time I’d like to be picked up by our in-house transportation people.  This was so they would know exactly when not to come.  The bus has been late every day, and my cab bill is thusly huge. The gym doesn’t work and neither does the laundry service.  This forced me to go to a Brazilian Wal-Mart to buy shirts, marking the third continent on which I've Wal-Marted. 

                A bottle of water here costs $4, and they add a $13 corkage fee to it.  Orange juice is $5.  Wifi is a monthly $60 charge.  How does this robbery go unpunished?  Oil money.  Sheraton got wise to the fact that the army of commuters here don’t care what it costs, and the various employers of said commuters learned that trying to reduce overhead by nickel-and-dime-ing their people simply wasn’t an option.  This results in the Sheraton Macae being one of Sheraton’s highest-revenue operations, and in my losing track of how much a bottle of water should cost.

I live in (anywhere in the USA but Houston or Lafayette) and don't know what oilfield people are like.  Could you educate me?

                With extremely rare exceptions, expats and commuters here are a bizarre, enormous family.  Many traits are common among this group of men from all corners of the world. The pressures of being far from home, especially during the holidays, are universal.  Everyone likes working for the same clients as everyone else.  Everyone hates working for the same clients as everyone else.  Shell and BP are constantly appreciated for their spare-no-expense, take-your-time approach to offshore work.  National Oil Companies are widely derided for their nepotistic hiring practices and unrealistic performance expectations. 

A strange sense of worldliness without formal education prevails here; a sense of having explored without reading the map or the wiki.  I wish more of these people took the time to publish stories from their trips, instead of just recanting them over a standard Brazilian 45 minute coffee break.  The material is there.  The experiential learning and global empathy these people possess decries the rough first impression the tattoos, piercings and gruff ambience create.  Looking through these people comes naturally to many highbrow white collar folks.  They don't know what they're missing.

The safety culture is nearly universal, and as the industry moves toward global standardization cases of exploiting lower level workers become rarer and rarer.  Drilling safety into Drillers’ heads has been a generations-long process, and it results in vertical integration of the team and peripheral crew (myself).  The reduction in hazing and general harassment is something I’ve personally witnessed – I broke out (petroleum for began a new position) as a roughneck/roustabout (entry level grunt) on a land rig in Northwest Houston.  I was 18 at the time and utterly green, both to the industry and to the world at large.  My coworkers were ex-felons with criminal records longer than my resume, and multiple ex wives and children to support.  My boss was called Timberg, and could possibly have invented oil, he’d been in the business so long.  He was an old-school tyrant. I was miserable – menial labor, tasks which had no conclusion, insults, verbal and (one time, then they learned) physical abuse.  My position during rig floor operations was “the wormhole.”  Pipe Dope, a foul lead-based grease which ruins all that it touches, kept finding ways into my ears and clothes.  You get the picture.  This contributed to an unsafe workplace, and towards that company losing my services eventually.

None of this is tolerated in the offshore world these days. Which is a good thing.  The increasingly technical nature of the work requires constant cooperation, and as distance to port increases so does the time for each embarkation.  14/14 lifestyles are becoming more and more rare, giving way to 28/28 and 35/35.  This is too much time to put up with detrimental people. There just isn’t a place for the BS any more.

I hope you feel better.

Thanks, Mom.

Shorty Out.