Aaargh, another delayed blog post due to work and spending
quality time with Mom. I just haven’t had the time to sit down for an hour or
two and focus on getting this done…seriously, we have had something to do every
evening not to mention busy and out of routines days at work! Anyways, now I
have the time, I made the time and have loads of things to report again. Rock
and roll.
Starting from ACN end of year party that I was heading to
just after publishing the previous post. The party was fun! I do remember and
it was lot of fun. The venue was La Ruche, one of my (many) favorite drink bars
in Brissie and the concept was “Soul” with free drinks and food until midnight
(I think the theme was lame, how do you dress up as “soul”...It can be anything
and everything...so I went for the short dress, high heels and big big ear
rings). Everyone was allowed to bring a quest, so basically the place was
mostly packed with strangers as I don’t know that many people from our office
outside my project, and as my project has plenty of recent new joiners from
around the world we all experienced the same feeling and hooked together. I was
so busy talking to people and drinking that I totally forgot to eat, it rarely happens
that I forget to eat. Around midnight I tried to migrate to the desk serving BBQ
hamburgers but ended up to the dance floor instead. It happens. And to report
the most interesting thing, Brissie office has the Tiger attitude too…I did
witness some fooling around of people who really shouldn’t be fooling around and
pretty blunt attempts from people who kind of forgot they are married. I behaved, of course. So mostly the evening
was all about drinking, not eating, catching up with colleagues and dancing our
assess off. I think it was around midnight we decided to make a move to a big gay
bar across the road (gay bar because we
wanted to dance, and gay people know how to dance) but couldn’t last long as
the high heels kind of got to me and hit the pillow at 2am. My hair was pretty
sore on Sunday but luckily Kaija had organized a Finnish lunch at their place
so I needed to get up, dress up and got a lot of good food and apple crumble
for dessert. It was my first official
party with our Brisbane office, I see a lot of potential (meaning parties, not
opposite sex).
Work wise past few weeks have been amazingly busy with
workshopping from Monday to Friday with a double booking last Tue and Wed and
same continuing this week. I haven’t had time to do any work basically, or even
to check my emails as here down under the wireless connections are most often
worth nothing. Work still doesn’t make me scream out of excitement and the
highlight was a biz trip to Emerald with 4 of my colleagues and straight to
Peak Downs mine to get a mine tour explaining the end-to-end process of mining
“production”. I rented a car from Emerald Airport (a bigger airport, not just a
tent) and got a brand new big 4WD with only 32km in the meter. I was asked to
drive it carefully and I promised to do so and told I have also attended a
defensive driving course but think the guy at the counter wasn’t convinced. I
also told him I promise to be gentle on the gear and he said “it’s automatic”.
That’s nice. The drive went well and safe and we hit Peak Downs a bit after
lunch, got our safety gear (including a pink hard hat) and headed to the “pit 42” to be
picked up by our tour guide. This time our escort wasn’t a macho miner but a
very very big guy John who can die any day for being so fat I think. Still he
managed to give us very educating tour across Peak Downs and organized us to
get a ride with the biggest Dragline on site. When approaching the dragline I
asked my colleague Kurt would it be totally inappropriate to start singing Lady
Gaga’s “Don’t be a drag, just be a queen” and he said yes, it would be totally
inappropriate. I thought it would’ve been funny. Anyways Draglines are these
huge monster earth removing machines that cost around 280M AUD each, are about
5 floors high and big as unit blocs and can move massive amount of dirt per
time (still dirt, not exciting or sexy). Peak Downs has also one out of three
biggest Draglines in the world but it wasn’t currently functioning. We still
got pictures of us standing in the bucket and heard that with the floods one of
competitors Draglines got severe damage as it is able to move 2m per step and
can take only 72 steps before getting overheated and they didn’t have enough
time to move it and it went swimming. He told that the mine site needs to inform the nearest power station when they are starting the dragline as it consumes so much power that they need to reserve one generator solely for the draglines use (I wonder if half of central Queensland loses electricity if they forget to inform them?) I also learned that Sweden is buying quite a lot of coal from
Peak Downs (around 160 000 tons per year) and they “are a bit fussy” with their
quality requirements. I asked for other big clients and they were “Korea and
Europe”. Jep, Europe as in Europe without further detail (except the story
about Sweden as the guy thought I am a blond from Sweden). I was happy to get a
tour around the site and hear detail of the processes but still do not find
mining as such very interesting. And I still struggle with the environmental
impacts. And in simplistic terms I believe it takes a lot to screw up a
business like Coal Mining as Australia has huge reserves of coal and they only
need to dig it up, process a little, transport to ports and ship it to China
and make ridiculous amount of profit. Well, I am maybe cutting a bit of corners
but still ;) After our tour we headed back to Dysart to check-in to MAC mine
camp we were supposed to stay overnight. I got a 2m x 3m size room, with no
lights and damp toilet. I said *shitshitfuckfuck* out loud, multiple times.
Good thing with no lights was that I didn’t see properly how terrible the room
was…not really something I would call a silver lining. After dinner I forced
myself to sleep, woke up at 4am to the noise from the car park right next to my
pillow and counted minutes to 6am to get up and get out of there. The workshop
went surprisingly well despite the lack of sleep, drove back to Emerald to find
out our flight was late due to big thunder storm and got home 11.15pm so tired
I only could cry. It was a blessing my mom was there waiting for me. It felt so
good to get a hug from her, sit next to her on the sofa and just cry. I felt
homesick. I wanted to go home. I missed the little people. I missed my friends and family. I missed sleeping in
my own bed. I hated mine camps. I hated damp toilets. I hated sandwiches for
lunch. I hated instant coffee. I hated the jargon I didn’t get. I hated in the
middle of nowhere airports without lights because of thunder storm. I hated
thunder storms. Hate is a strong word and I hated a lot of things and most of
them related to mining and work. But I did get a hug from mom. I got some food
although it was fairly late. I got sweet dreams in my own bed. I woke up
feeling like a different person. These ups and downs come and go…so far I have
managed to get through alive. But tough week with big emotions. Felt fragile.
Weekend was full of action again as it was the second last
weekend here for my mom. On Friday we went to have dinner to a new Korean BBQ
restaurant one block from my place and ended up having a long night as if
everyone brings one bottle of wine (many restaurants in Brissie have the Bring
Your Own BYO concept were customers can bring their own wine and they are only
charging 3AUD per head for the glasses) with simple math everyone ends up
drinking one bottle of wine or even more if you continue the evening to my
balcony with some excellent Moscato. Hupsista. No "if"s, it just happened. I do
love my balcony with capital L, it truly is my living room now and love
spending time there. Mom got the furniture for me as a Christmas present as she
wanted to give me something I can enjoy every day and I surely do. I told her
she doesn’t need to do that and the best present I can ever imagine is my
family flying over and visiting me here and getting a hug from a loved one…she
said she knows it but wants to give it to me. So most of the
evenings we sit at the balcony in candle light talking or reading magazines
accompanied by two little geckos named Kekkonen and Kepponen, tiny little
creatures who keep to mosquitoes and cockroaches away. On Saturday I also
managed to buy a bookshelf (and thongs and a hat) despite the most terrible
hangover in my Aussie life history. I did need a bit of push from Mom and big
fat brekkie at Campos, but still I made another big decision again to
increase the quality of my life. Finally I get the books out of the boxes
(bought few favorite ones, and also the ones I got for a farewell present) and
pictures of loved ones too. I have a place to put my life into :) Who would’ve thought
life is in a bookshelf, well mine is.
We also visited Stradbroke on Sunday and managed to keep in
shade and not to burn. It was my very first proper beach day, went swimming, and
had a big burger and Corona for lunch and ice cream for dessert! And the beauty
of it all is the fact that I can do it every weekend if I want to :) I also got more
visitors on Monday as my friends Tomi and Jenny are travelling in Australia and
New Zealand for 6 weeks and their first stop was at Brissie. They have heaps of
plans and will most likely see more in 6 weeks than I’ll do in a year which makes
me think people who transfer should have double amount of holidays: 30 days for
visiting back home and 30 days exploring the new home country with an extra
allowance to afford expensive flights to other side of the world and the less
expensive here inside Australia. Why not?
Anyways now it is Thursday evening and soon the last weekend
with my Mom as she’s leaving back home on Monday. I find it stressful, knowing
the moment of “It was great to have you here, see you later, love you, and take
care” will be emotional and hard. I find goodbyes difficult although these are
not goodbyes but see-you-later instead. I am slightly traumatized by the farewells in
Helsinki, I definitely don’t want to go through the same again as it was the
hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I do think my mom needs a strategy
to learn to deal with the missing and bye byes. It cannot be the case that the
tears of missing start to hit a week before departure as it is just too much
energy spend on negative thoughts rather than enjoying the time we have
together. I need a strategy too, a strategy for not to be afraid of the bye
bye’s as the sweetness of the reunions totally out rules the salty tears I cry
at the time of separation. This is the first time that someone very close comes
to visit my life here and then goes back there where I left…I don’t know yet
how it feels, suppose it will leave a void. I need to be able to fill in that
void quickly. Still, I have another upside around the corner as my dad is arriving to Brissie
late on Tuesday night. Can’t wait to see them, wave the Finnish flag, wish
welcome and get a big warm hug.
Big warm hug,
//Ansku
PS: December 1st and little bunny behind the first window (have two calendars, picture and chocolate version). Thanks Inna for the great Christmas surprise...love it!
:)
VastaaPoista