21 March 2008

good friday.

I guess I wasn't quite clear in my last entry. The helicopter simulator videos were similar exercises to the ones we performed in class this week. Underwater helicopter egress is necessary because crew is sometimes transported to the rigs/ worksite via helicopter, and in the event of a controlled or semi-controlled emergency landing, I'd need to escape, which I'd be able to do, having completed the helicopter underwater egress training (HUET). Does that explain it? It all makes sense to me, so I'm never sure if I'm explaining things adequately.

I finally finished my offshore emergency/procedural training today, and left Houma, LA early this afternoon. I was meant to leave after yesterday's class, but the office called as I was driving away to let me know they'd scheduled one more class: BP's own offshore safety training, a prerequisite for working on a BP rig, which I'm leaving to do in just a few hours. So, tomorrow's the big day! My first time offshore. I'm curious and excited and a little nervous and freaked out, but I'm basically too damn tired to really feel all of it, which is good, because if I could sense emotion, I probably be over-thinking and mind-f*&king everything. As it stands, I'm getting up at 1:30am to drive to the dock, to take a boat to the rig. The job tomorrow is a one-day inspection, most likely no more than a few hours on the rig, then back to the dock. A good intro, I think. Good to have a look around, but not too intense.

Fun Louisiana tidbits from this week... Apparently the whole of LA is Catholic, or enough of it that Good Friday is a holiday, and everyone takes the day off. And everyone has a crawfish boil on Good Friday, which sounded kind of gross (boiled. crawfish. Huh?), but is actually extremely delish, and totally addicting. I don't know if you've ever seen a crawfish, they're just wee little clawed lobsters, that grow in the rice patties and in the swamp (on my way back from Houma, I kept seeing groups of people with nets, near the marshy roadside ditches. I finally realized they were huntin them up some mudbugs, mmm-hmmm.) Since they're not so big, you need to eat a lot of them to get a good meal. So you put a lot of them in a pot, with some boil seasonings (which are cajun flavor, mais oui), and maybe a little sausage and maybe a little corn (I'm not sure if it all goes in together? It all gets served together, though.). Then you serve a huge pile of them with some dippin' sauce. To eat, you sever the tail, suck out the cajun-flavored juices from the head (best accomplished by sucking whilst biting down on it), then peel the tail and eat the meat therein. You can also eat the meat in the wee claws, but it seems more trouble than it's worth. Also, you must always roll up your sleeves when eating crawfish, says Miss Margaret, my crawfish tutor and dining companion.

4 comments:

daddio said...

Now it all makes sense Ang. Sounds like you had a good week. Dad

Unknown said...

I'm breaking my streak of 32 years without leaving a comment on a blog to say - I MISS N'AWLINS. Eat up, cher - you've given me quite an auhvee!

roslyn said...

Zatt's makes crawfish-flavored chips called "Crawdaddy". they're ... intense.

above|below. said...

what's auhvee? should i be scared to know the answer? is it something you found on a french-english translation site???

i'm totally scared of crawdaddy-flavored chips. yet strangely compelled to go find some!! ;)