Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Things just aren't that exciting, I don't really want to relive every boring day doing the same thing, and I doubt anyone would really want to read it.
Quick update. I'll be going to Dubai August 12-15 to do work on some tanks there. While there I have made a reservation to go to the top of the Burj Khalifa - the world's tallest building. I am also doing an evening desert safari which should be a good cultural experience.
I then come back here for about 10 days then return to Dubai for one last round of tank maintenance, then my flight home. I have made a reservation at the Hilton on Jumeirah Beach in Dubai for my last 2 nights - figure I should get some form of vacation out of this. I found a great rate of $133 per night, including breakfast buffet!
Some observations - things maybe "lost in translation."
1. On the back of a water pump truck, "For complaining please call...." I need to remember that number and give it to my students.
2. Gas station name, FUCHS with the slogan "German technology speaks for itself."
3. My favorite company names ever, "Schwing Concrete Pumps." Awesome.
Another note, have you seen the Airbus 380?! It's a full double decker, not like those silly 747's with only a few rows up top. This things has a full on lounge, spa, maybe a bowling alley, upstairs in the plane! That's what I flew on from Dubai to Saudi. It is MASSIVE. You don't realize how big it is until you're standing underneath it on the tarmac.
OK, have to get to work. Got a bit of "good" news to take some stress off. The shop won't be able to open until late September since the retail product won't arrive until then. No deadlines for me! I just have to get as much done as I can while I'm here. That's a load off, considering I can;t do much more work until these other guys get their stuff done... How long can it possibly take to make a shelf for a fish tank stand?! Obviously several days. Damn, I could have cut a piece a plywood into a rectangle with a hand saw by now, I asked them about 4 days ago. UGH.
Ramadan Kareem! That's what everyone is saying, I assume it means something to the effect of happy Ramadan - which frankly seems like a contradiction, but whatever.
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
No, that's not where I'm working, but it looks cool.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
July 24, 2011
I know it's been several days since my last post but I've been so tried by the end of the day I just want to pass out. Not that I've been DOING too much, I'm just tired. I haven't been sleeping well due to either an army of mosquitos or one very hungry sucker. I wake up with bites, then I start scratching and then it itches more and I can't stop scratching and therefore can't fall back asleep.
As far as work goes, we have moved all of the MaRS tanks into the shop and they are now all plumbed together and ready to go. If only we had power. We have already used up all of the breakers in the panel that's in the shop so we have to bring in some more power! The electricians need to run cables along the ceiling and down to the tanks. We are also missing some pumps and not all of the ones we do have work. Tomorrow we are taking a long extension cord and will test the lights and pumps and see what we can fix and what will need to be replaced.
On Sunday we moved the shark tank onto the stand. That was an adventure. We had about 15 guys and still had to call in help from the random electricians and carpenters hanging around. The tank was sitting on roller carts that were shorter than the tank stand so we had to figure out how to get it up above the level of the stand. We brought in a huge pile of lumber pieces, used the pallet jacks to jack the tank up, built up the roller carts so the tank would now be higher than the stand and then rolled the tank onto the stand. If only. The first part was simple enough. Once we started pushing the tank and simultaneously pulling with this huge strap thing, the roller carts inevitably hit the stand. We had to stop, jack the tank up, move the carts back, lower the tank back onto the carts, push/pull again, stop, repeat... Once the tank was "mostly" on the stand we just had to use brute force to push the thing into place on the stand. It weighs about 3 tons. We couldn't push on the actual acrylic viewing glass, which limited where we could work from and we also had to deftly maneuver around flimsy walls and support beams in the room. I'll work on getting the pics and videos of the ordeal up here or on Facebook soon. It was, of course, the last 5cm of getting it placed evenly on the stand that posed the biggest problem, but we got it on there pretty square! Now we just have to pray that the architectural consultant gives the OK on the reinforcment of the stand that was done last minute. We might have to move the tank off again.
Saw my first Starbucks in Jeddah yesterday. Right next door to a Pizza Hut. Interestingly enough, Pizza Huts here are like Starbucks back home, they are on every corner.
We were supposed to get a shipment of 25 baby blacktip sharks today from Sri Lanka but something happened and they didn't get shipped. It had something to do with the fact that the plane was overloaded so of all the things they could unload, they unloaded the live fish. Now, as you might imagine, being shipped to another country is stressful an a shark. Hell, it's stressful on me. They get fasted for 24 hours, packed into large plastic bags with a sedative like drug in it, stuffed into styrofoam boxes then packed into crates. They are them driven 1 hour to the airport, go through all the normal customs screenings and procedures, get loaded onto the plane and then after another hour or so get OFFLOADED from the plane. The guys had to go back to the airport, pick up the crates, take them back to their facility and unload them just to have to do this all over again in a few days. Stupid. These are animals that will be here at the palace, in another large shark tank that Issham is building for the guy who owns the boat I worked on last summer and then a few will probably end up in the tank at the shop.
There are 2 British guys here today doing some work and they invited me to go out to dinner with them. That should be fun. We'll go on an adventure. I'll let you know how that all plays out.
I have some sort of electronics travel curse. Last summer it was the Kobo ereader, this summer it is my underwater camera and iPhone. The camera flooded with water after only the 4th dive so it's toast. Now my iPhone speaker doesn't work. I can hear it through the headphones but the speaker is out. I did the rice thing to see if it was moisture in the phone and the next day it worked! Then it didn't again. It's been sitting in a bowl of rice for 3 days and it's still not working. I give. It only got wet due to me being sweaty and it being in my pocket. Apple needs to be able to make sweat proof phones. That's pretty ridiculous that I'm going to have to pay to fix this damn thing because I was sweating.
OK, time to go get ready for tonight!
As far as work goes, we have moved all of the MaRS tanks into the shop and they are now all plumbed together and ready to go. If only we had power. We have already used up all of the breakers in the panel that's in the shop so we have to bring in some more power! The electricians need to run cables along the ceiling and down to the tanks. We are also missing some pumps and not all of the ones we do have work. Tomorrow we are taking a long extension cord and will test the lights and pumps and see what we can fix and what will need to be replaced.
On Sunday we moved the shark tank onto the stand. That was an adventure. We had about 15 guys and still had to call in help from the random electricians and carpenters hanging around. The tank was sitting on roller carts that were shorter than the tank stand so we had to figure out how to get it up above the level of the stand. We brought in a huge pile of lumber pieces, used the pallet jacks to jack the tank up, built up the roller carts so the tank would now be higher than the stand and then rolled the tank onto the stand. If only. The first part was simple enough. Once we started pushing the tank and simultaneously pulling with this huge strap thing, the roller carts inevitably hit the stand. We had to stop, jack the tank up, move the carts back, lower the tank back onto the carts, push/pull again, stop, repeat... Once the tank was "mostly" on the stand we just had to use brute force to push the thing into place on the stand. It weighs about 3 tons. We couldn't push on the actual acrylic viewing glass, which limited where we could work from and we also had to deftly maneuver around flimsy walls and support beams in the room. I'll work on getting the pics and videos of the ordeal up here or on Facebook soon. It was, of course, the last 5cm of getting it placed evenly on the stand that posed the biggest problem, but we got it on there pretty square! Now we just have to pray that the architectural consultant gives the OK on the reinforcment of the stand that was done last minute. We might have to move the tank off again.
Saw my first Starbucks in Jeddah yesterday. Right next door to a Pizza Hut. Interestingly enough, Pizza Huts here are like Starbucks back home, they are on every corner.
We were supposed to get a shipment of 25 baby blacktip sharks today from Sri Lanka but something happened and they didn't get shipped. It had something to do with the fact that the plane was overloaded so of all the things they could unload, they unloaded the live fish. Now, as you might imagine, being shipped to another country is stressful an a shark. Hell, it's stressful on me. They get fasted for 24 hours, packed into large plastic bags with a sedative like drug in it, stuffed into styrofoam boxes then packed into crates. They are them driven 1 hour to the airport, go through all the normal customs screenings and procedures, get loaded onto the plane and then after another hour or so get OFFLOADED from the plane. The guys had to go back to the airport, pick up the crates, take them back to their facility and unload them just to have to do this all over again in a few days. Stupid. These are animals that will be here at the palace, in another large shark tank that Issham is building for the guy who owns the boat I worked on last summer and then a few will probably end up in the tank at the shop.
There are 2 British guys here today doing some work and they invited me to go out to dinner with them. That should be fun. We'll go on an adventure. I'll let you know how that all plays out.
I have some sort of electronics travel curse. Last summer it was the Kobo ereader, this summer it is my underwater camera and iPhone. The camera flooded with water after only the 4th dive so it's toast. Now my iPhone speaker doesn't work. I can hear it through the headphones but the speaker is out. I did the rice thing to see if it was moisture in the phone and the next day it worked! Then it didn't again. It's been sitting in a bowl of rice for 3 days and it's still not working. I give. It only got wet due to me being sweaty and it being in my pocket. Apple needs to be able to make sweat proof phones. That's pretty ridiculous that I'm going to have to pay to fix this damn thing because I was sweating.
OK, time to go get ready for tonight!
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
July 20, 2011
OK so the fun started today!
We finally took a truckload of the MaRS tank units to the shop. Boy was this an adventure! First, the truck that shows up has a cover on it which isn't tall enough to allow the tanks to be loaded on. The driver puts in a few calls and gets a new, open bed truck to come out - be he's 30 minutes away. So we sit around and wait. Samir and I start trying to disassemble a broken, rusty pump from one of the systems - just for the hell of it. A few minutes later, the forklift arrives. So, we're all set, except for a truck. Finally, he gets there and we get started. Now, the listed dry weight of one of these tank systems is 490 pounds. With some wrestling (that made me cringe more than once), we got 10 of these things loaded up on the truck.
Four of us piled into Sanji's tiny car and took off for the shop with the trucks following us. I told him to go ahead and pass them because I didn't want to see them shaking around and crashing into each other and breaking in the back of that truck. Once the tanks arrived at the store we pondered our options for actually getting them off the truck, into the store, and then into place. We had to get them off the 1 meter high truck bed, up some steps, across a small unevenly paved plaza, up another step into the shop, then through the shop and between a large support beam and the shark tank over to where they will be set up. Did I mention that they are taller than the doorway into the shop? These tanks aren't attached to the racks except by the plumbing that goes into them from the back and a small lip on the front of the rack.
First things first. We backed the truck into a small passenger unloading area and jumped a curb to back it up as far as we could so that the bed actually extended over the first set of steps we had to conquer. We then used a hydraulic pallet jack to get them off the truck. We hiked it up to the same level as the truck bed and "slid" the racks onto the jack. I say "slid" because, again, it was more like wrestling them. We used some pieces of PVC pipe to kind of roll them along as much as we could. Did I mention they weigh almost 500 pounds? The guys with the pallet jack rolled them over to the front of the store while Samir and I "slid" the next rack to the edge of the truck bed. One by one, we got each rack off the truck. By the time we unloaded all 10, it was noon. Lunch time!! Prayer time!! We had no food and since it was prayer time, there were no restaurants, stores, 7-11's open to get anything. So we kept working.
To get the tanks into the shop we "slid" them to the door, tipped them almost horizontal, and hauled them in. This just about gave me a heart attack for several reasons. First, these things are NOT supposed to be horizontal! I was having visions of the tanks sliding right off the racks, shattering to millions of pieces and me getting horribly maimed. Second, I was the guy on the inside toward whom the tanks were being tipped. This means that a majority of the weight of these things was squarely on my shoulders and back as 4 guys on the back side lifted in over the threshold. Once safely inside the shop we has a great furniture mover/skateboard that we put them on and just wheeled them through the maze of the store, dodging paint buckets, electricians, some unidentifiable chemical, shelves, the shark tank, the shark tank stand and a bewildered janitor. We got 5 of the tanks in when Sanji finally decided it was a good time to go get food. Finally, a break.
Once of the boss men showed up, asked me some questions, then took me upstairs to The Steak House for lunch. I protested, I actually wanted to eat with the other guys but he insisted. This place was apparently named the "Best Restaurant in Saudi Arabia." It is a typical American steakhouse. Full salad bar, burgers, steak, chicken, fries, shakes - just no bacon! Anyway, I couldn't help myself, I've been homesick, missing good ol' American fare (usually I get chicken or beef stir fry with white rice for lunch AND dinner every day). I had the guacamole cheese burger and it was AWESOME!! I didn't even my beef stir fry and white rice for dinner because I was still so full.
By the time we finished lunch and got back down a whole army of guys had showed up and had all the tanks in the shop! Jonathan even made an appearance and sent most of the guys back to the palace or fish station while Sanji, Samir and I stayed behind to put the tanks "sort of" in place. We still have 12 to bring and the shark tank is blocking an area where some tanks will go but we wanted to get and idea of what it will look like. Sanji took an inventory of what we will need to actually plumb these things, connect them together and get them running. We will probably get the shark tank on it's stand tomorrow - couldn't do it today because they painted the stand so it was still sticky which would have made it very hard to slide the tank across it.
Saturday and Sunday the guys and I will start getting these darn tanks up and running so stuff is starting to take off. I should be kept very busy for the next few weeks which will be good.
I'm also trying to get myself kick started to begin planning for school. It seems like I am so far removed from that, it's hard to get into that gear.
Did I mention that one of the marmoset monkeys had babies?! She has 2 but apparently it is very rare that both survive. So far so good. I've tried to get pictures but they are very difficult to see. Hopefully they make it and before I leave they will be out and about.
OK, bed time, it's been a long day!
We finally took a truckload of the MaRS tank units to the shop. Boy was this an adventure! First, the truck that shows up has a cover on it which isn't tall enough to allow the tanks to be loaded on. The driver puts in a few calls and gets a new, open bed truck to come out - be he's 30 minutes away. So we sit around and wait. Samir and I start trying to disassemble a broken, rusty pump from one of the systems - just for the hell of it. A few minutes later, the forklift arrives. So, we're all set, except for a truck. Finally, he gets there and we get started. Now, the listed dry weight of one of these tank systems is 490 pounds. With some wrestling (that made me cringe more than once), we got 10 of these things loaded up on the truck.
Four of us piled into Sanji's tiny car and took off for the shop with the trucks following us. I told him to go ahead and pass them because I didn't want to see them shaking around and crashing into each other and breaking in the back of that truck. Once the tanks arrived at the store we pondered our options for actually getting them off the truck, into the store, and then into place. We had to get them off the 1 meter high truck bed, up some steps, across a small unevenly paved plaza, up another step into the shop, then through the shop and between a large support beam and the shark tank over to where they will be set up. Did I mention that they are taller than the doorway into the shop? These tanks aren't attached to the racks except by the plumbing that goes into them from the back and a small lip on the front of the rack.
First things first. We backed the truck into a small passenger unloading area and jumped a curb to back it up as far as we could so that the bed actually extended over the first set of steps we had to conquer. We then used a hydraulic pallet jack to get them off the truck. We hiked it up to the same level as the truck bed and "slid" the racks onto the jack. I say "slid" because, again, it was more like wrestling them. We used some pieces of PVC pipe to kind of roll them along as much as we could. Did I mention they weigh almost 500 pounds? The guys with the pallet jack rolled them over to the front of the store while Samir and I "slid" the next rack to the edge of the truck bed. One by one, we got each rack off the truck. By the time we unloaded all 10, it was noon. Lunch time!! Prayer time!! We had no food and since it was prayer time, there were no restaurants, stores, 7-11's open to get anything. So we kept working.
To get the tanks into the shop we "slid" them to the door, tipped them almost horizontal, and hauled them in. This just about gave me a heart attack for several reasons. First, these things are NOT supposed to be horizontal! I was having visions of the tanks sliding right off the racks, shattering to millions of pieces and me getting horribly maimed. Second, I was the guy on the inside toward whom the tanks were being tipped. This means that a majority of the weight of these things was squarely on my shoulders and back as 4 guys on the back side lifted in over the threshold. Once safely inside the shop we has a great furniture mover/skateboard that we put them on and just wheeled them through the maze of the store, dodging paint buckets, electricians, some unidentifiable chemical, shelves, the shark tank, the shark tank stand and a bewildered janitor. We got 5 of the tanks in when Sanji finally decided it was a good time to go get food. Finally, a break.
Once of the boss men showed up, asked me some questions, then took me upstairs to The Steak House for lunch. I protested, I actually wanted to eat with the other guys but he insisted. This place was apparently named the "Best Restaurant in Saudi Arabia." It is a typical American steakhouse. Full salad bar, burgers, steak, chicken, fries, shakes - just no bacon! Anyway, I couldn't help myself, I've been homesick, missing good ol' American fare (usually I get chicken or beef stir fry with white rice for lunch AND dinner every day). I had the guacamole cheese burger and it was AWESOME!! I didn't even my beef stir fry and white rice for dinner because I was still so full.
By the time we finished lunch and got back down a whole army of guys had showed up and had all the tanks in the shop! Jonathan even made an appearance and sent most of the guys back to the palace or fish station while Sanji, Samir and I stayed behind to put the tanks "sort of" in place. We still have 12 to bring and the shark tank is blocking an area where some tanks will go but we wanted to get and idea of what it will look like. Sanji took an inventory of what we will need to actually plumb these things, connect them together and get them running. We will probably get the shark tank on it's stand tomorrow - couldn't do it today because they painted the stand so it was still sticky which would have made it very hard to slide the tank across it.
Saturday and Sunday the guys and I will start getting these darn tanks up and running so stuff is starting to take off. I should be kept very busy for the next few weeks which will be good.
I'm also trying to get myself kick started to begin planning for school. It seems like I am so far removed from that, it's hard to get into that gear.
Did I mention that one of the marmoset monkeys had babies?! She has 2 but apparently it is very rare that both survive. So far so good. I've tried to get pictures but they are very difficult to see. Hopefully they make it and before I leave they will be out and about.
OK, bed time, it's been a long day!
Monday, July 18, 2011
July 18, 2011
Sorry for the lack of posts in the past few days. I have been down at our storage area cleaning the fish tank racks. It's been a very hot, sweaty, dirty few days and by the time I'm off work, I just want to shower and pass out. I have had some of the guys that work down there helping me out. I cleaned one of these tank systems on my own the other day and it took me about 4 hours to do 1 by myself. With about 6 guys, we got 16 of them cleaned in approximately 5 hours. I was down there this morning and we started putting them back together so they are ready to install once we move them to the shop which should hopefully be in the next few days.
The shark tank should be ready to put in place today or tomorrow. Once we can start moving stuff into the shop, my job can really get going.
Alright, just wanted to check in.
The shark tank should be ready to put in place today or tomorrow. Once we can start moving stuff into the shop, my job can really get going.
Alright, just wanted to check in.
Friday, July 15, 2011
July 15, 2011
So, I had to work a half day today to make up for taking yesterday off to go diving. They really only have 1 true day off each week, Thursday is a half day. So anyway, Jonathan left for Dubai on Wednesday evening and gave me a job to do today. he wanted me to get into the shark lagoon and get an accurate "fin count" of how many male and female blacktip sharks we have. Sweet!! Can't think of a better way to spend a day than to sit and let sharks swim around you!
I spent the first 20 minutes on the highest rock I could find near the edge of the lagoon trying to get a total fin count from the surface. The trick in doing this it to make sure you're not counting the same shark 5 times as they continually swim around you. Knowing how many total there are will kind of help you keep track. This was very similar to what I did with the National Marine Fisheries in Santa Cruz one summer - only we were snorkeling in the Noyo River counting salmon. But luckily I had the experience of doing this with salmon to train me how to snorkel and count different fish and keep track of them so as to not recount the same shark several times. It's like when I ask Gianna to count how many arms her stuffed octopus has and she just keeps counting around and around until she runs out of numbers that she knows.
Anyway, I finally decided that there are 9 blacktips in the exhibit and from the looks of it, most of them were female, only 1 or 2 males. I slowly slid into the lagoon with a heavy weight belt around my waist to keep me underwater without having to flail around. I found a nice nook in a little pile of rocks and had a seat. Blacktips are extremely skiddish and even when I was just standing in the lagoon, not moving, they would swim in my general direction, realize that I was there and go shooting off in the opposite direction. I don't know how they even recognize my feet as something other than a rock (unless they are scared of rocks too) but they do. The problem is that they take off so haphazardly that they can run into things (walls, other fish, actual scary rocks) and hurt themselves. They also expend a great deal of energy bolting off like that and can become very stressed out, so we have to be very slow and deliberate when entering their exhibits. So I sat and became as much of a non-scary rock as I could. After about 20 minutes of sitting patiently, they finally started swimming back in my general vicinity. I got some good pictures and video and came up with a final score of Girls 7 - Boys 2. When the big, 5 foot long eel came out of his rock and started swimming around, I decided it was time for me to get out. I don't mess with the eels, from my experience, they are NOT skiddish and will come right up to you and use their teeth.
I was hoping to get enough good pictures to compile a bit of a database to ID the individual sharks but many of the pictures were too blurry or far away to make out any distinguishing features. Many times scientists use things like scars to ID animals, but these guys don't have many of those since they don't have much of competition and I don't think they have reached breeding age, which is when most of the scars appear.
I also found another zebra shark egg case which didn't seem to have hatched yet, but I don't think there's anything inside. We took it out of the lagoon and put it in a tank in the aquarium to show Jonathan tomorrow.
Not bad for my day off!
July 14, 2011
Today I went diving!
I did a boat trip with Desert Sea Divers. We left their dock at about 8:15 AM after turning my passport over to them - which made me a bit nervous, but I had to assume they were professionals. We had 3 full boats going out to do 3 dives for a total of 8 hours on the water. I was on boat 4 with Divemaster Mark from Columbus, Ohio. While setting up my gear I got to chatting with some of the people on the boat. I have discovered the best way to meet westerners out here is to go diving. Since you cannot get a tourist visa to Saudi Arabia, these dive operations book tours and act as the Arabian sponsor to get people in on visitor visas. I didn't realize how "privileged" I am to have the ability to come here. Anyway, the girl next to me is originally from LA but she's living in Riyadh and works as an analyst at the US Embassy. She was with another guy from Utah who does finance for the Embassy. The 3 of us plus a guy from the UK become a dive team with me as the leader since I am a PADI Divemaster.
Our first dive was the Cable Wreck which was a cargo ship named Staphonos carrying a payload of steel cable and beams that hit a shallow reef out in the middle of the ocean and dumped her load everywhere - hence the name. Mark informed up that one of the other boats was tied up to a line that was attached to the bow of the wreck so we could descend down the line, swim towards the stern, then back to the bow and ascend. By the time we were geared up, our boat had turned and he said that he were probably just about right over the stern so we might as well just drop right down. Well, by the time my group was in the water, we had been carried pretty far off by the current. Then as we tried to descend, Mac (the finance guy) had to go back up. His full mustache was making it impossible for his mask to create a seal on his face so it kept flooding. He decided to head back to the boat. Now we had been just bobbing around in the water for quite some time. Did I mention we were sitting in about 6 foot swells coming from every direction as they bounced off the reefs? By now, we were probably 100 yards form the dive boat. I decided we should descend and then head in the right direction. We headed down, found another group and started following them. Soon, I saw a large dark shape in the distance, I figured it was the wreck. We swam for a while and nothing more materialized. I knew the wreck was in about 60 feet of water so I checked my dive computer and to my surprise it said I was at 96 feet! I immediately grabbed the other 2 divers and we ascended to 60 feet and continued on. Eventually, the dark shape came into focus - it was the open ocean. We had hit the edge of a drop-off and were staring into deep blue nothingness that went on forever. At that point, I decided I would surface and take a look around. Trying to communicate that to my buddies underwater was quite entertaining for them I'm sure. I ascended and sure enough, we were still quite far from the boat, but at least I had a heading. I went back down and we continued. Finally, we were tired, didn't know where were were so we all went up, located the boat and began swimming towards it. After about 15 minutes of kicking and not getting anywhere, the boat spotted us and came to pick us up. Once we were aboard, they had to keep circling around picking up other random divers that had gotten caught in the current and taken way off course. So, no, we didn't see the wreck.
We had some stray divers on our boat, and our Divemaster, Mark, ended up on another boat so we headed to a protected, shallow reef, tied the boats together, did a diver swap and then motored to the next reef, Ana's Reef. This was a nice, shallow reef in protected waters so it was super calm and relatively clear. We jumped in, Mac even got down for a bit and followed us around until he had to surface and become a snorkeller. We saw some big beautiful corals and a nice variety of fish, including a moray eel and a black and white snapper that I am still working on identifying (not sure if it is a juvenile form of something of if that's what it looks like all it's life) but they are pretty rare to see, so that was cool.
After this dive we had a nice lunch of salad and rice with chicken and veggies. We stayed anchored here for about another hour so we starting taking flying leaps off the boat and snorkeling around. At about 2:00 we left for our last dive at South Tower Reef. This was a great site, shallow and well protected with some incredible coral and fish life. We saw 2 blue spotted rays, lots of pipefish, a cute little baby Volitans lionfish and some massive nudibranchs (sea slugs).
We hit the dock at exactly 5:00 which was pretty good considering most stuff around here doesn't operate on any kind of schedule. My new friends from the Embassy even gave me a ride back to the Palace. When I got home, I rinsed my gear, stuffed my face and then passed out cold while watching Invictus on TV.
Good day!
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
July 13, 2011
I got dirty today! I woke up and went for a swim out in the marina because it seemed like a more fun way of getting some cardio then jogging on the treadmill. First thing I did today was go to the storage facility – Sun Village – to see what kind of plumbing parts we had out there. The shark tank should be in place soon and we need to have all of the pieces to get it up and running. The most important piece is a 3” bulkhead that goes in the bottom of the tank to serve as a drain to the filtration system. That is ultimately what I was looking for. EVERYTHING that was sent over from Sac in the sea freight container is covered in a 1/2” layer of dirt. So while rummaging through these boxes I got covered in the stuff – and didn’t find the bulkhead.
When I returned to the Palace, Jonathan showed me a large wooden crate, about 3’ x 3’ filled with dirt covered PVC parts. He thought that maybe the shark tank bulkhead was in there, even though some of his other workers hadn’t seen it. Well, after digging around and pulling out all of the useful stuff I found in there, I stumbled across what I was looking for. It was at the bottom of the crate in the back corner, or course. Jonathan and Sam were both quite impressed that I had found it. It really wasn’t anything spectacular, but it was dirty. Anyway, I then had to take all of the other pieces (I filled an old Fish Planet shopping cart) and wash them off.
After lunch Jonathan asked me to wash off one of the retail fish tank racks (from here on they will be called MaRS units). There are about 25 of these things that need to be cleaned up and moved to the shop. Most of them have been cleaned up but probably not as thoroughly as they need to be. Jonathan wanted me to clean one up myself so that I could instruct the other guys as to how to do it properly. The rack was also covered in a thick layer of dirt, so much of that ended up on me.
I was very excited to have a chance to actually DO something today! It was quite warm out today but there was a nice breeze. By the end of the day I was even excited that I had gotten some color on my pasty, white skin. Unfortunately, after showering, all of that color was gone – so it wasn’t the sun, it was the dirt.
Tomorrow I will be taking the day off to go diving all day! I’m going on a boat trip with Desert Sea Divers for a 3 dive trip. We will be going to something called the Cable Wreck and a couple of different reefs offshore. I guess the wreck was some sort of cargo ship carrying a load of steel cables or something so there are these huge tangles of cable near the site. It is supposed to be one of the better wreck sites in the area. I’m very excited and will take lots of pictures so stay tuned to Facebook for those.
When I returned to the Palace, Jonathan showed me a large wooden crate, about 3’ x 3’ filled with dirt covered PVC parts. He thought that maybe the shark tank bulkhead was in there, even though some of his other workers hadn’t seen it. Well, after digging around and pulling out all of the useful stuff I found in there, I stumbled across what I was looking for. It was at the bottom of the crate in the back corner, or course. Jonathan and Sam were both quite impressed that I had found it. It really wasn’t anything spectacular, but it was dirty. Anyway, I then had to take all of the other pieces (I filled an old Fish Planet shopping cart) and wash them off.
After lunch Jonathan asked me to wash off one of the retail fish tank racks (from here on they will be called MaRS units). There are about 25 of these things that need to be cleaned up and moved to the shop. Most of them have been cleaned up but probably not as thoroughly as they need to be. Jonathan wanted me to clean one up myself so that I could instruct the other guys as to how to do it properly. The rack was also covered in a thick layer of dirt, so much of that ended up on me.
I was very excited to have a chance to actually DO something today! It was quite warm out today but there was a nice breeze. By the end of the day I was even excited that I had gotten some color on my pasty, white skin. Unfortunately, after showering, all of that color was gone – so it wasn’t the sun, it was the dirt.
Tomorrow I will be taking the day off to go diving all day! I’m going on a boat trip with Desert Sea Divers for a 3 dive trip. We will be going to something called the Cable Wreck and a couple of different reefs offshore. I guess the wreck was some sort of cargo ship carrying a load of steel cables or something so there are these huge tangles of cable near the site. It is supposed to be one of the better wreck sites in the area. I’m very excited and will take lots of pictures so stay tuned to Facebook for those.
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