WINTER LIFE ... THE SCHLUMBERGER WAY

For the oil hunter, Canada is an interesting place, specially in winters when the most inaccessible parts of a vast wasteland becomes just another driveway on ice. It indeed is a wonderful time since you can start "mining" oil roughly 70m below the earth's surface!! However, as all coins must have a flip side, this too brings in a lot of activity and hectic schedules in our lives. Hence, here is a post dedicated to a unique last two weeks in North Canada.


The suffering started on 19th February, as we drove 3 hours north from the last fortress of civilization (ironically called Fort McMurray) on our way to what are called "winter projects" for obvious reasons. As dusk fell, so did snow making everything resemble a white desert bereft of any life-forms whatsoever. Only after we reached camp, did I manage to catch glimpses of gigantic moving forms which from various angles somewhat resembled a cross between grizzly bears and humans. The camp in-charge we talked to as at least 6'5" tall and about half of that in diameter; needless to say it never is a pleasant experience to be talking with your head held at an angle greater than 90 degrees from your body!!

1st day at camp - in snow(check my hair & shirt); -25 degrees during the day

As I realized soon enough to my dismay that I would be sharing my room (if I may take the liberty of calling it a room), I strangely began to think about my first day in Kgp when I had gone up to my room to find a complete stranger waiting to greet me; only this time it would be a colleague of mine with me!! The room seemed pretty similar to rooms in SN Hall for some reason, maybe because we boys never had the luxury of seeing an almirah and a dresser in our hostel rooms.

Bedroom & my room-mate

As soon as we had installed ourselves into the room, started the tour of the camp. The bathrooms bore faint resemblances to those in Kgp, simply by the virtue of the bathing stalls not having doors, though this time by design rather than some naughty soul having wrecked havoc on them. The heavenly smell that I had imagined to have left behind suddenly wafted up to catch me by utter surprise; a look up to the ceiling confirmed that it would be pretty much the same over the next few days as well, given the fact that the exhaust fan in my apartment kitchen was probably bigger the sole one present in a washroom of 12 stalls!! The sounds of laughter and the water pouring out of a couple of showers confirmed the fact that no one seemed to be bothered much by either the smell or the deliberate abscence of doors!!

The dining room came next; this time came the familiar aroma of ketchup and French fries. To cut a long, pathetic and demoralizing story short, this was pretty much the same aroma that greeted me for the remaining days at camp, at all meals - potatoes in all their majestic, royal forms ranging from fries, mashed, boiled and even roasted. I guess even a year's abstinence wouldn't quite relieve my intestines (and my tongue) of the pleasure of having to digest potatoes three times a day.

As a delirious brain woke up the next morning trying to figure out what I was doing in a strange bed, the radio crackled informing us that a well was ready and waiting for us. Thus, off we headed in falling snow and -30 degrees to a meet a bunch of retarded drillers whose only aim in life seemed to stare blankly at me, somewhat amused to realize that a human being could be less than 6' tall ... God knows what conclusions they might have drawn about my origins!!

On location all setup to start work (logging)

Thus continued the above for 11 more days before fate intervened in the form of a car crash. On the way to a job, we crashed our car and sort of mutilitated its headlights, front and side fenders, grill, bumper and side mirror. And so smiled Fate, as the head office pulled us out due to safety concerns ... here I am reliving an insane thirteen days, though thankfully in the midst of civilization at long last!!