to the DRC...again

In August I traveled to the DRC again for work (see this post).  In more plain English, the Democratic Republic of the Congo in central Africa.  I went in 2009 for 2 months by myself but this trip was for only 10 days and I went with 2 other people from my project group.  It is a little crazy to travel for 3 days (Friday night - Monday afternoon) and 11,899 miles to only stay 10 days but that was the best choice.  The DRC has changed it's Visa rules so I could stay for 10 days or send my passport to the capital city upon arriving in the DRC and wait for it to come back with a new visa - which could be anywhere from 3 weeks to 8 weeks.  A visit to a country that is quite unstable for an undetermined amount of time and without my passport???...10 days was the obvious choice.

The flights over were long but comfortable in my business class seat.  This isn't the best picture, but it shows the pod seating on the plane.  It is not bad to fly 2 nights in a row when laying down is an option.  I'm not sure how I can ever fly coach again on an international flight when on my own time, however I will manage because flying business class is WAY too expense.

This project was different than others I have worked on because we were only able to travel to the site once, due to distance and cost.  So, we had to make the most of the trip.  10 days was not very much time in the country and only 8 were available for actually working at the mine site (the other 2 were travel days).  We had to hit the ground running and never look back.  I worked LOOOONNNNNNNG days ( up at 4:45 am and to bed at 11:00 pm while working all but about 2 hours of the time) and became VERY exhausted on about day 4.  So after that I had to scale back a little (up at 5:00 am and to bed at 10:30 pm while working all but about 4 hours of the time).  

It was a tough project.  Every that we could imagine going wrong did go wrong.  Everything that we could not imagine going wrong did go wrong.  We have several project go-live's under our belts and we can trouble shoot any problem within a matter of hours, however this project threw problems at us which took days to solve.  It was horribly frustrating.  But we are a good project team (if I do say so myself).  We solved all of the problems, over came the obstacles, and ending up successfully upgrading the lab to a new database.

Since I was working so much and a lot of the driving to and from the mine was done in the dark I didn't get to take many pictures, but I did manage a few.

Last time I was in Africa they brought up hot lunch for the ex-pats each day.  Times have changed and now everyone gets sack lunches (which I think is only fair).  Each day the lunch consisted of 4 things...2 sandwiches, 1 drink, and something else like chips, cookies or a piece of fruit.  There was usually 1 sandwich that was pretty good and one that was questionable, mostly because the bread was soggy and I hate soggy bread.  One day the sandwiches were especially picture worthy.

1 fried egg sandwich and 1 fish tail sandwich.  Yeah, it smelled as bad as it looks.  I would have thought about eating the egg sandwich but it had been sitting in the lab the entire morning; grounds for it being unsafe.  And the fish tail sandwich...that of course was out of the question.  The cookies were delicious that day :)

This was my room at base camp.  It was minus a mosquito net however it was the dry season and there were no mosquitoes to be found.  

On the bus ride from Tenke to Lubumbashi to fly home I took pictures out the window.  I figured if I took enough there would at least be a few that turned out.

This one is not great, but I was trying to capture the HUGE termite mounds in the background.  The things that look sort of like tepee's, those are termite mounds.

I appreciated going to the DRC again after 4 years.  While the areas I saw (mostly near the mine) are still very poor and humble, a lot of progress has been made.  It was great to see the strides the Congolese people have made at the mine and the pride they take in their work instead of treating it as "just a way to make money".  And it is always fun to rub shoulders with the Congolese because they truely are nice people with high values and morals.  Until next time DRC...if I ever make it back again.

More from South America

A little more from my trip to South America:

The hotel in Arequipa, Peru was Hotel Libertador Arequipa.  It was super nice, more like a vacation hotel then work.  This was the "backyard" of the hotel.  We always ate breakfast on the patio right next to the pool. Between the trees was a great view of one of the volcanoes (the great view didn't come through in this picture).

They had alpaca's and a giant turtle in the "backyard".  I did try alpaca meat, it's tasty.

The view of the volcano through the trees.  Peru and Chile are part of the Pacific Ring of Fire so there are three pretty large volcanoes around the city.

In Peru they serve Cuy (Coo-ee) in some resturants; this if fried guinea pig (see right side of menu, 4th down).  And in case the Cuy doesn't sound appetizing, how about some Mashead potatoes (right hand side about half way down)?

We ordered Cuy as an appetizer to share one night.   It tastes kind of like dark bird meat but very greasy.

A closer view...good thing I didn't look at him too closely before eating.

In Calama, Chile (the place that looked like the moon) there where roadside memorials every mile or so.  I assume it is for people who have died along the road.  Some where small and some were really large...like double carport size.  They provided something to look at on the 1 hour ride to the mine.

Calama also has some volcanoes near by.  The small black bump is the lower left of the picture is (so I'm told) the smallest active land volcano in the world.

Proof that I was working:

Chile seems to be a very patriotic country, there where flags flying everywhere.

A pause in the park after dinner for a group picture in Copiapó, Chile.  Steve, Jeff, Gary, me, Karl

On the final day we went to a beach town, Caldera, for lunch.  It had beautiful views but was a little windy and cold since it was winter.

I thought this would be my last trip to South America, but it turns out I will be going again at the end of January.  Maybe I'll be able to do a little more sight seeing this time...

South America - Trip #3

My first trip to South America was in May, I went to Santiago again in August for one week and then spent two weeks in Peru and Chile at the end of September.  All three of the trips were for work; a project I am involved in.  

The 3rd trip was for our "go-live", which means the labs would start using the database.  The trip involved LOTS of working and LOTS of flying.  For just over two weeks I spent every day either flying or working...even weekends :(  During the course of the 2 weeks I was at three different mines, 1 in Peru and 2 in Chile.  The routes to get to the towns by the mines was crazy!!!  The map of Chile and Peru will help me explain the legs of the trip.

A = Lima, Peru
B = Arequipa, Peru
C = Calama, Chile
D = Copiapó, Chile
E = Santiago, Chile

15th = Flew from the LA to A, then from A to B.
19th and 20th = Flew from B to A, then from A to E, then from E to C.
24th = Flew from C to E, then from E to D.
28th = Flew from D to E, then from E to Dallas.

Some of the cities aren't too far apart but it is not feasible to drive between them quickly and there are not flights between the cities so all of the flights had to hub through Lima or Santiago.  Flying from Arequipa to Calama is comparable to needing to get from Denver to Kansas City but flying from Denver to San Francisco to New York City To Kansas City.  It is a time consuming way to travel but on the bright side it means more frequent flyer miles.


Arequipa, Peru
In October General Conference they announced that a temple is going to be built here - yeah for Arequipa!  It it a fairly large city and the traffic is insane.  They are very aggressive drivers but it seems to work because traffic moves along pretty well and I never saw any accidents or dented cars.  It took about 1 hour to drive to the mine and one morning during the commute we ran into a traffic jam on the edge of town because of some cows being herded down the street.

Peru is still a developing country so the middle of town was very modern but along the outskirts it got a little more rustic and 3rd world.  It's a little hard to see in the picture but they love to paint their houses/walls/etc. with vibrant colors, it was fun to look at.

There is a lot of agriculture around Arequipa.  I know they grow tons of green onions, although they weren't included in any of the food I ate so maybe they are mostly for export???.  This man was harvesting his field...leeks maybe?  All of the field work was done manually, there were usually at least 5 people working in most fields.


All of the crops made it very green and pretty.

Calama, Chile
Very much a mining city.  We were told there are around 50 mines within 100 km of Calama.  Wow!  A lot of people fly in to work their shift and then fly back to their homes on their days off.  I understand why.  As soon as you leave the town the landscape looks like this:

It is a little like driving on the moon.  I think I did see around 10 plants by the time we got to the mine which was an hour drive.  Needless to say, they don't have any agriculture in Calama.

Copiapó, Chile
Around Copiapó they grow a lot of olives and grapes.  At all of the restaurants there would be Copiapó olive oil at the tables.  I think there were also plenty of local wines...I don't know about that but I do know about juice in South America, it is fantastic.

All of the hotels were full so we stayed at the company owned "compound".  It was a nice gated area with about 12 3-bedroom houses.  I stayed in a house by myself and made sure that none of the dozen or so cats wondering around outside didn't get in.

Hola Santiago

From May 7 - May 12 I went on a trip to Santiago for work.  Don't be confused by the flags, it was Chile.  I'm not sure why they flew Brazilian, Canadian, and Chinese (not in this picture) flags beside the Marriott and Chilean flags at the hotel.  My best guesses are there were dignitaries from those countries staying at the hotel or those are the countries they were feeling most friendly toward that day.

I LOVE traveling, especially when I don't have to pay a dime!  The flights down and back were during the night but I got was able to get a decent night sleep because I get to fly business class for international work travel (one thing I would never do on my own so I am grateful for every minute of it).

Santiago is a very modern city with a lot of condo living, pollution, and small cars.  The driving is a little crazy with very narrow lanes and very defensive drivers, but there does not seem to be any road rage or honking.  One day my taxi driver was competing with a bus and another car for the right to this one lane...it was hilarious.  I was a little disappointed by the smog because I really wanted to see the Andes. You can almost make them out in the background.

Across the street from the office was this earthquake proof more-resistant building.  As I am no architectural engineer, I can't explain how it works but it looked neat.  The bottom was very narrow and it got wider as it went up.  (Mostly I included two pictures if the building for the benefit of a certain B.R. in Florida who loves concrete.)

The food in Chile was pretty good.  My favorite item was Chirimoya, it is a juice.  I am not a juice drinker regularly but this was to die for!  Chirimoya is a fruit down in South America; David says it is really good and it must be because it makes delicious juice.  I liken it to pear juice because it is white and has the same grittyness, but it is sweeter.  The empanadas were also good; they are like small hot pockets with either cheese or meat in them.  They also serve bread at every meal with butter and picante (salsa).  It seemed weird at first but it is really good.  One thing I did not like was albacore pot pie.  It was a fishy, salty, burnt mess and I mostly just pushed it around my plate so it looked like I ate some.  Dinner in Chile doesn't start until at least 8 or 8:30.  One night we went to dinner at 7:00 and the restaurant was deserted but when we left at 10:30 it was jam-packed.  I guess they must not go to be until at least midnight on a regular basis.

On Friday we worked until 2 and then took a late lunch to a Peruvian restaurant, El Otto Sitio.  It is in the left middle of the picture.

Peruvian food is so good!  They had a yellow pepper dip for the bread (instead of picante) that was a little spicy but very tasty.  I got a chicken stew and it was awesome.  I highly recommend Peruvian food.

On Saturday our flight wasn't until 8:30 pm so we did some sight seeing.  Luckily one of my co-workers speaks fluent Spanish so we were able to get around the city without getting lost.  First we rode the subway to the city center.  This building is called something like the President's Mansion.

While we were at this building a group of people running a race ran by and there was a pack of dogs running with them.  I didn't notice too many stray dogs in Santiago, but there are at least 30 running the race.

In the city center there were some beautiful old buildings,

and a really pretty cathedral.

Right outside the cathedral was a city park, the no-grass kind.  People were selling all sorts of crafts, music was playing, and there were hundreds of pigeons.  Some people were letting them land on their heads, gross.    

 And, in my defense, I didn't notice the sculptures at the top of the fountain until just now.

After the city center we went over to this hill in the middle of the city.  (There is this 8 or 10 km tunnel under the hill, it was an extremely long tunnel).  You can ride a tram to the top or stop half-way up at a zoo.  

There were a lot of trees around the track so it blocked the view on the way up but from the top you could see most of the city.  At least I anticipate you could see most of the city on a not-so-smoggy day.  Once again, my hopes to see the Andes from the top of the hill were ruined.  I'm hoping that it won't be so smoggy in July when I go again so I can actually see the Andes, but I'm not holding my breath.

An out-of-the-norm flight

This week I am in Florida for work attending a class. Yep, about 2 miles from the beach and I am in class all day. Bummer. Being in Florida hasn't brought too much to talk about; the flight on the other hand...that was quite the adventure.

We (me and four other people from work that I traveled with) boarded the plane in Phoenix for an 8:50 am take-off. The plane took off, but didn't climb to altitude. We had just started circling the Phoenix area when the pilot came over the intercom. (Note - all of the quotes are going to be my best recollection of what was said).

"There is an error message with the door to the landing gear. We are going to open the landing gear and close it, which should take care of the error. In the meantime, we need to circle Phoenix because we can't continue with the error."

Okay, no problem. It got loud as the landing gear opened and closed. We continued circling. The landing gear opened once again, with the wing extensions open (that's the official term I'm sure).

Pilot on intercom again. "The message is still showing. We are in communication with the mechanics on the ground to see if we can fix the error. In the meantime we will continue circling. However, with all this circling we no longer have enough fuel to get us to Ft. Lauderdale so we'll have to return to the airport at some point."

In a few more minutes. "We are going to have to land so they can look on the error on the ground. It is nothing that can endanger the aircraft, but we need to fix it for the most safe flight. We need to circle for a while longer to burn off more fuel before we land."

About 20 minutes later. "We are getting ready to land. Right now the landing gear is locked. All indications show the wheels are down, however we want to make sure since it is locked. We are going to first do a fly by of the airport. We will fly low to the ground crew can make sure the wheels are down. Then, if everything is fine, we will come back around to land. Again, we think it is out but we want double check for safety. Also, when we do land, there are going to be emergency vehicles on the runway. This is just a precautionary measure."

Until this point it was kind of humorous, but now we are getting the seriousness of the situation. Emergency vehicles = pretty serious...right? The pilots were being very good about calmly giving us as much information as we needed so everyone on the plane was staying calm. We did still kind of joke because it eliminated any tension that could surface.

We circled around and came in for the fly by. From my window seat I watched as we got closer and closer to the ground. Near the runway we went down low...really low. People who couldn't see out the windows thought we were actually going to land. Really we just flew over the runway, <100 feet above the ground I think. Then we went up again.

After a few minutes the pilot again, "Everything looks good with the landing gear so we are going to circle back around and land. With the landing gear locked we can not manually steer the plane, so when we land we will sit on the runway until a tow comes to get us." Pause, pause, pause. "Oh, and remember that there will be emergency vehicles on the ground...as a precautionary measure".

Hmm, we didn't know about the lack of steering before. Interesting. But, people on the plane were still joking. Had the wheels not been down the atmosphere would have turned to scared and panicky quickly, but luckily that wasn't the case. I don't know what they do if the wheels don't come down; I can however imagine that it would be a bumpy landing probably filled with skidding, tipping, turning, breaking, burning, screaming and other not good things.

We finally landed. The emergency vehicles were there...right on the side of the runway...lights blaring...about 7 or 8 of them. We thankfully didn't need them. We sat on the runway. We were towed to a terminal. We de-boarded the plane. We sat in the airport for 1.5 hours. We boarded a different plane and had an non eventful flight to Florida, 4.5 hours late but in one piece and not complaining.

Ending of an Era

It all began in the fall of 2005. At work I was on the team that was getting ready to open the Central Lab and a new chemist came on board, Veronica. She was quiet and I was busy and through the fall we didn't get to know each other too well. We worked with the nicest 70 something year old man, Dick, and he assigned the desks in our new office. He said that he felt sure that Veronica and I needed to have desks right across from each other. And it turned out that he was so right.

For the past 5 years, this has been Veronica and my desks. We have not only became great work colleagues, but great friends as well. We have been through many ups and downs, solved numerous lab problems, dealt with complaints, enjoyed triumphs and endured the stresses...together. It has been so great to be able to sit across from her and talk about anything and everything.

Great things, however sometimes end and situations in life change, as was the case on July 30. This was Veronica's last day of work at the lab; she has transferred to a new job within the company. She is working at a mine and will be one of the labs customers, so I'll still work with her often, but in a different capacity. Luckily she isn't moving (that would be awful) so we can still get together outside of work and catch up on things.

The era of the desks is over. I am glad that we had 5 great years of being "neighbors" and will cherish all of the memories made and lessons I have learned from Veronica.

One of those losing my mind moments

That's what happened to me today at work.

I was at my desk and needed to take a bag of samples into the lab to pack them in a box. Lab coat, check. Pen and marker in the pocket of the lab coat, check. (And by pocket I mean the upper left pocket, hooked to the pocket, just like a nerd but without the pocket protector. ha ha). Packing tape gun, check. Paperwork for shipping the samples, check. Safety glasses...hum.

My safety glasses were no where to be found. This was very strange. They are always either on my desk or on my face because I have to wear them into the lab. I searched everywhere; my desk, the pockets of my labcoat, my head, the rest of the office, the lunchroom. No where. This bugs me because I hate losing stuff.

I go up front to get a new pair from the secretary. There are two other people up front who I explain my dilema to as she gets the new pair. She hands me the new pair and I put down the tape gun and my safety glasses to open the new package....wait a minute. There they were. In my hand with the tape gun the entire time!

Instead of just going back to my desk I tell the secretary and two other people that I found my glasses, they were in my hand the whole time. They laugh at me and say I shouldn't have confessed to them. Oh well, at least I was being honest. But I felt like I had completely lost my mind. It happens.

Trip to Florida

I spent all of last week in Florida for a work trip. I had a conference in Orlando, but still managed to fit in some time for play. This is the third conference I've attended for work and one of my favorite things about them is the awesome hotels/accommodations; I stayed in the Disney Contemporary Resort this time. I know that in "real life" I would never fork out the money to stay in a resort or 5 star hotel, which makes me really appreciate the great opportunities I get through work. On Tuesday the conference didn't start until evening so we (myself and 3 co-workers) headed to Universal Studios. After visiting that park I learned there is really something to be said for Disney Parks. All day long I felt like the employees at Universal were trying too hard to make sure we were having fun, which became obnoxious. I was able to push that aside and have fun anyway, especially on the climbing wall. This was the first time I have ever done a climbing wall and now I wonder what I was waiting for. It is so fun, but also so tiring! I got two climbs on the wall and made it to the top to ring the bell on the first climb. With that, however, came tired arms, legs and wrists and I was pretty much spent for my second climb. My arms and legs were shaking pretty bad, but no worries, I still made it half-way up. What a fun activity!

On the trip I also got to see Cirque de Soleil, go to Epcot, listen to some interesting talks and workshops as well as some boring ones, and hang out with my friend Brad who lives in Orlando now. Oh, and I almost forgot the small light/music water show that happened each night on the lake in front of my room. It was a fun trip. Thanks to my work for paying for the trip where I could make memories.