So, wanna work half the year and make lots of money...

[SSE 4 2SS]

They say that you make lots of money offshore and only work half the year, but the vast majority of people do not understand how things are done out here...

I get asked all the time, "so, you work in Brazil, Egypt, Malaysia, etc... whats it like"...

"It's Blue..."

I work offshore, and specifically I work in deep water... 1500 feet or greater depths in most cases, though I have worked in nine or ten thousand feet of water...It's blue, blue to the North, the East, the West, and the South... yes even to the south... We fly into most countries at night, and then get up really early in the morning, before light and head to a heliport... We fly out to the rig and it's still blue... the blue sky meets the blue water way over there, and seldom is there anything to look at but blue...

You realize and have lots of Empathy for the voyagers on the May Flower, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria... The rig is so insignificant out there in all that blue... and the knucklehead exterior designers... Paint contract writers, probably laugh from painting most of the rig light grey, so it blends into the blue haze...

Several people contributed, ...here is a primer and prep list for you in case you desire to join us... Great Pay, Great Benefits, travel (in the back of the bus)... what more could anyone ask for...

They are intended to be funny, and in most cases they are...if you realize how true and close to home they are... I'm sure a lot of you wonderful and amazing Service personnel that have been in that big middle east sand box can relate to some of these... different colors but other than that...

So, you think you wanna work offshore…
Here is a list of ways to get used to working on an offshore rig and determine if it’s for you…:
Buy a dumpster, paint it gray and live in it for 2 weeks straight. (Conex Box Living quarters), formally called Elder buildings... since no one wants to live in a conex box...

Yell at your neighbor if he walks outside without a hard hat and boots.

Have your family eat the raunchiest Mexican food you can find for three days straight, then yell at them for spending too much work time in the bathroom.

Make your family complete a JSA (Job Safety Analysis) before they operate any appliances in your home (i.e. Dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc.) after the job is finished, make sure they fill out an AAR, after action review, determine if they need to update or revise the JSA, and document everything in the computer, the file cabinet, and the various offices around the rig.

Spend $20,000 on a satellite system for your TV, but only watch Fox News and the Country Music station.

Have the family vote on which TV channels to watch and then pick different ones.

Sew reflective strips to the front of all your shirts and around the calf of your pants leg.

Reprogram all your phones so that you have to dial 99 the number and # to call anyone outside your neighborhood. When you do call, wait 3 seconds after every question before speaking. For example, I dial… Line select, 1,2 or 3, then 9-9-0021-1-512-555-5555 Hello................................. Hey it'hellos me...... whgoatahead.............oh hyoueygo ahead.............. this is the overlap caused by the delay in transmission time...

Needle gun the aluminum siding on your house after your neighbors have gone to bed. It’s an air powered gun with a bunch of needles used to remove paint, and rust and anything else in the way…

Buy $50,000 worth of radio equipment "in case" there is an emergency and hire a qualified radio operator to "man the station"..... then make them pay your bills, arrange your travel and answer all your phone calls.

When your kids come home with A's on their report card buy them a camouflage ball cap with flames down the side and the family name embroidered across the brim. ·

Yell at your wife if she cooks anything but fried chicken for lunch on Sunday

Each Christmas when your aunt Jane and uncle Jim visit make them stay on the porch until they have watched a 2 hour video of yourself pointing out all the fire extinguishers and smoke alarms in your house. Safety first…

Never call a local repair man when your stove breaks. Instead call someone in the UK and pay for their flight. When they arrive call the taxi company and give them strict orders not to pick the repairman up until the stove is fixed. (The degree of expertise of a repair person is directly proportional to the distance they travel to get to you and inversly proportional to their actual value at repairing things.)

Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain. Have you wife whip open the curtain about 3 hours after you go to sleep. She should then shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble "Sorry, wrong rack."

Designate a room in the house as "The Control Room" then make your kids sit their in front of a computer screen for 12 hours. Tell them that if anything turns red they could cost the family millions of dollars, or the house could sink...

Tell your neighbor to call you when ever they see a thunderstorm in your area.

Leave the lawn mower running in your living room 24 hours a day. (No matter where on a rig you are, there is a constant and loud drone from the engine room)

Head to the local dive "bar" and ask the first retired guy you see to sit in your home office scratching his nuts. Make him a plaque reading "company man" and tell him to "remind" you daily about every squeaky floor, dripping faucet, late mail delivery.... Tell him to invite his friends over and when they show up move your kids into the garage so the guests have a nice bed to sleep in. (Service hands...)

Each morning jot down the wind speed/direction, barometer reading and the amount of fluids in your water heater, gas tank, lawn mower, milk carton, .... convert the figures you get into whatever unit of measurement you did not use or understand and write it down in 6 different places.

Have your kid monitor the police scanner 24 hours a day "just in case there's an emergency.

Go to your local elementary school and ask the principal to send you a weekly list of the stupidest things the kindergarteners have done that week. Call a meeting with your family every Monday and read the list with a straight face.

Place toothpicks, picante sauce and a can of Tony Chachere's on your kitchen table. Unless you work in Brazil, then it’s olive oil to replace the picante sauce…

Call 911 and tell them to send a helicopter each time your son falls off his bike.

Eat only at all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants that specialize in fried foods. Bonus points if you have a view of the cooking area from your table and the place primarily employs nose-pickers and butt-scratchers.

Twice a day (or more if possible) get everyone together in as small a room as possible (a closet or bathroom should do) and have a meeting to listen to someone tell you what you did all day. Bonus points for reiterating statements multiple times (i.e. "Like Joe said, safety is...").


It's all in fun... Hope you got a chuckle out of it, and if not...

[Moriartii]

Bwahahahahahahaha sounds like my time aboard a destroyer in the Navy as a gunner. The needle gun really brings back memories.

Cheers
K

[SDCamaro10]

Reminds me alot of how we feel in Navy.. lol. Heres how to simulate the Navy life.

1. Buy a dumpster, paint it gray and live in it for 6 months straight.
2. Run all of the piping and wires inside your house on the outside of the walls.
3. Pump 10 inches of nasty, crappy water into your basement, then pump it out, clean up, and paint the basement "deck gray."
4. Every couple of weeks, dress up in your best clothes and go the scummiest part of town, find the most run down, trashy bar you can, pay $10 per beer until you're hammered, then walk home in the freezing cold.
5. Perform a weekly disassembly and inspection of your lawnmower.
6. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays turn your water temperature up to 200 degrees, then on Tuesday and Thursday turn it down to 10 degrees. On Saturdays, and Sundays declare to your entire family that they used too much water during the week, so all showering is secured.
7. Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling.
8. Have your next door neighbor come over each day at 5am, and blow a whistle so loud that Helen Keller could hear it and shout "Reveille, Reveille, all hands heave out and trice up".
9. Have your mother-in-law write down everything she's going to do the following day, then have her make you stand in the back yard at 6am and read it to you.
10. Eat the raunchiest Mexican food you can find for three days straight, then lock yourself out of the bathroom for 12 hours, and hang a sign on the door that reads "Secured-contact OA division at X-3053."
11. Submit a request form to your father-in-law, asking if it's ok for you to leave your house before 3pm.
12. Invite 200 of your not-so-closest friends to come over, then board up all the windows and doors to your house for 6 months. After the 6 months is up, take down the boards, wave at your friends and family through the front window of your home...you can't leave until the next day you have duty.
13. Shower with above-mentioned friends.
14. Make your family qualify to operate all the appliances in your home (i.e. Dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc.).
15. Walk around your car for 4 hours checking the tire pressure every 15 minutes.
16. Sit in your car and let it run for 4 hours before going anywhere. This is to ensure your engine is properly "lighted off."
17. Empty all the garbage bins in your house, and sweep your driveway 3 times a day, whether they need it or not. (Now sweepers, start your brooms, clean sweep down fore and aft, empty all shitcans over the fantail)
18. Repaint your entire house once a month.
19. Cook all of your food blindfolded, groping for any spice and seasoning you can get your hands on.
20.Use eighteen scoops of budget coffee grounds per pot, and allow each pot to sit 5 hours before drinking.
21. Have your neighbor collect all your mail for a month, read your magazines, and randomly lose every 5th item.
22. Spend $20,000 on a satellite system for your TV, but only watch CNN and the Weather Channel.
23. Avoid watching TV with the exception of movies which are played in the middle of the night. Have the family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.
24. Have your 5-year-old cousin give you a haircut with goat shears.
25. Sew back pockets to the front of your pants.
26. Spend 2 weeks in the red-light districts of Europe, and call it "world travel."
27. Attempt to spend 5 years working at McDonalds, and NOT get promoted.
28. Ensure that any promotions you do get are from stepping on the dead bodies of your co-workers.
29. Needle gun the aluminum siding on your house after your neighbors have gone to bed.
30. When your children are in bed, run into their room with a megaphone,and shout at the top of your lungs that your home is under attack, and order them to man their battle stations. ("General quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations")
31. Make your family menu a week ahead of time and do so without checking the pantry and refrigerator.
32. Post a menu on the refrigerator door informing your family that you are having steak for dinner. Then make them wait in line for at least an hour, when they finally get to the kitchen, tell them that you are out of steak, but you have dried ham or hot dogs. Repeat daily until they don't pay attention to the menu any more so they just ask for hot dogs.
33.When baking a cake, prop up one side of the pan while it is in the oven. Spread icing on real thick to level it off.
34. In the middle of January, place a podium at the end of your driveway. Have you family stand watches at the podium, rotating at 4-hour intervals.
35. Lock yourself and your family in your house for 6 weeks. Then tell them that at the end of the 6th week you're going to take them to Disneyland for "weekend liberty." When the end of the 6th week rolls around, inform them that Disneyland has been canceled due to the fact that they need to get ready for Engineering-certification, and that it will be another week before they can leave the house.
36. In your grim, gray dumpster (refer to #1), with 200 of your not-so-closest friend (cite para. 12) regardless of gender, suffer through PMS!
37. Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain. Have you wife whip open the curtain about 3 hours after you go to sleep. She should then shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble "Sorry, wrong rack."
38. Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of your bathtub, move the shower head to chest level. When you take showers, make sure you shut off the water while you soap down.
39. When there is a thunderstorm in your area, find a wobbly rocking chair and rock as hard as you can until you become nauseous. have a supply of stale crackers in your shirt pocket.
40. Put lube oil in your humidifier and set it on high.
41. For ex-engineering types: leave the lawn mower running in your living room eight hours a day.
42. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.
43.Once a week, blow compressed air up your chimney, making sure the wind carries the soot onto your neighbors house. Ignore his complaints.
44. Every other month buy green or red marine primer and put it in a paint sprayer. Spray it over the roof of your house onto your neighbors car. Ignore his complaints.
45. Lock wire the lug nuts on your car.
46. Buy a trash compactor, but use it only once a week. Store the garbage on the other side of your bathtub.
47. Get up every night around midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread.
48. Set your alarm clock to go off at random during the night, jump up and get dressed as fast as you can making sure you button up the top button on your shirt, stuff you pants into your socks. Run out into the backyard and uncoil the garden hose.
49. Once a month, take every major appliance apart and put them back together again.
50. Install a fluorescent lamp under the coffee table and then get under it and read books.
51. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip or bang your head every time you pass through one of them.
52. Every so often, throw the cat in the pool and shout "Man overboard, starboard side" Then run into the house and sweep all the pots and dishes off the counter. Yell at the wife and kids for not having the kitchen "stowed for sea."
53. Put on the headphones from your stereo set, but don't plug them in. Hang a paper cup around your neck with string. Go stand in front of yours tove. Say ... to no one in particular "Stove manned and ready" Stand there for three or four hours. And say again to no one in particular "stove secured." Roll up your headphones and paper cup and place them in a box.

[Moriartii]

ROFLMAO!!!!
I see it hasnt gotten much better since my time!!!!!!!
Cheers
K

[SSE 4 2SS]

Obviously some of the same ones, but OMG I laughed really hard at a few of them... highlighted in red..

Originally Posted by SDCamaro10

Reminds me alot of how we feel in Navy.. lol. Heres how to simulate the Navy life.

1. Buy a dumpster, paint it gray and live in it for 6 months straight.
2. Run all of the piping and wires inside your house on the outside of the walls.
3. Pump 10 inches of nasty, crappy water into your basement, then pump it out, clean up, and paint the basement "deck gray."
4. Every couple of weeks, dress up in your best clothes and go the scummiest part of town, find the most run down, trashy bar you can, pay $10 per beer until you're hammered, then walk home in the freezing cold.
5. Perform a weekly disassembly and inspection of your lawnmower.
6. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays turn your water temperature up to 200 degrees, then on Tuesday and Thursday turn it down to 10 degrees. On Saturdays, and Sundays declare to your entire family that they used too much water during the week, so all showering is secured.
7. Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling.
8. Have your next door neighbor come over each day at 5am, and blow a whistle so loud that Helen Keller could hear it and shout "Reveille, Reveille, all hands heave out and trice up".
9. Have your mother-in-law write down everything she's going to do the following day, then have her make you stand in the back yard at 6am and read it to you.
10. Eat the raunchiest Mexican food you can find for three days straight, then lock yourself out of the bathroom for 12 hours, and hang a sign on the door that reads "Secured-contact OA division at X-3053."
11. Submit a request form to your father-in-law, asking if it's ok for you to leave your house before 3pm.
12. Invite 200 of your not-so-closest friends to come over, then board up all the windows and doors to your house for 6 months. After the 6 months is up, take down the boards, wave at your friends and family through the front window of your home...you can't leave until the next day you have duty.
13. Shower with above-mentioned friends.
14. Make your family qualify to operate all the appliances in your home (i.e. Dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc.).
15. Walk around your car for 4 hours checking the tire pressure every 15 minutes.
16. Sit in your car and let it run for 4 hours before going anywhere. This is to ensure your engine is properly "lighted off."
17. Empty all the garbage bins in your house, and sweep your driveway 3 times a day, whether they need it or not. (Now sweepers, start your brooms, clean sweep down fore and aft, empty all shitcans over the fantail)
18. Repaint your entire house once a month.
19. Cook all of your food blindfolded, groping for any spice and seasoning you can get your hands on. you been on my rig ???
20.Use eighteen scoops of budget coffee grounds per pot, and allow each pot to sit 5 hours before drinking.
21. Have your neighbor collect all your mail for a month, read your magazines, and randomly lose every 5th item.
22. Spend $20,000 on a satellite system for your TV, but only watch CNN and the Weather Channel.
23. Avoid watching TV with the exception of movies which are played in the middle of the night. Have the family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.
24. Have your 5-year-old cousin give you a haircut with goat shears.
25. Sew back pockets to the front of your pants.
26. Spend 2 weeks in the red-light districts of Europe, and call it "world travel."
27. Attempt to spend 5 years working at McDonalds, and NOT get promoted.
28. Ensure that any promotions you do get are from stepping on the dead bodies of your co-workers.
29. Needle gun the aluminum siding on your house after your neighbors have gone to bed.
30. When your children are in bed, run into their room with a megaphone,and shout at the top of your lungs that your home is under attack, and order them to man their battle stations. ("General quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations")
31. Make your family menu a week ahead of time and do so without checking the pantry and refrigerator.
32. Post a menu on the refrigerator door informing your family that you are having steak for dinner. Then make them wait in line for at least an hour, when they finally get to the kitchen, tell them that you are out of steak, but you have dried ham or hot dogs. Repeat daily until they don't pay attention to the menu any more so they just ask for hot dogs.
33.When baking a cake, prop up one side of the pan while it is in the oven. Spread icing on real thick to level it off.
34. In the middle of January, place a podium at the end of your driveway. Have you family stand watches at the podium, rotating at 4-hour intervals.
35. Lock yourself and your family in your house for 6 weeks. Then tell them that at the end of the 6th week you're going to take them to Disneyland for "weekend liberty." When the end of the 6th week rolls around, inform them that Disneyland has been canceled due to the fact that they need to get ready for Engineering-certification, and that it will be another week before they can leave the house.
36. In your grim, gray dumpster (refer to #1), with 200 of your not-so-closest friend (cite para. 12) regardless of gender, suffer through PMS!
37. Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain. Have you wife whip open the curtain about 3 hours after you go to sleep. She should then shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble "Sorry, wrong rack."
38. Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of your bathtub, move the shower head to chest level. When you take showers, make sure you shut off the water while you soap down.
39. When there is a thunderstorm in your area, find a wobbly rocking chair and rock as hard as you can until you become nauseous. have a supply of stale crackers in your shirt pocket.
40. Put lube oil in your humidifier and set it on high.
41. For ex-engineering types: leave the lawn mower running in your living room eight hours a day.
42. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.
43.Once a week, blow compressed air up your chimney, making sure the wind carries the soot onto your neighbors house. Ignore his complaints.
44. Every other month buy green or red marine primer and put it in a paint sprayer. Spray it over the roof of your house onto your neighbors car. Ignore his complaints.
45. Lock wire the lug nuts on your car.
46. Buy a trash compactor, but use it only once a week. Store the garbage on the other side of your bathtub.
47. Get up every night around midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread.
48. Set your alarm clock to go off at random during the night, jump up and get dressed as fast as you can making sure you button up the top button on your shirt, stuff you pants into your socks. Run out into the backyard and uncoil the garden hose. Fire Drills, gotta love em...
49. Once a month, take every major appliance apart and put them back together again.
50. Install a fluorescent lamp under the coffee table and then get under it and read books.
51. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip or bang your head every time you pass through one of them.
52. Every so often, throw the cat in the pool and shout "Man overboard, starboard side" Then run into the house and sweep all the pots and dishes off the counter. Yell at the wife and kids for not having the kitchen "stowed for sea."
53. Put on the headphones from your stereo set, but don't plug them in. Hang a paper cup around your neck with string. Go stand in front of yours tove. Say ... to no one in particular "Stove manned and ready" Stand there for three or four hours. And say again to no one in particular "stove secured." Roll up your headphones and paper cup and place them in a box.

OMG I'm still laughing...

[speedster]

Funny stuff guys. Sorry it is so close to the truth...

Well, just think of the "other" 6 months.

[motorhead]

All I can say is ,it must be worth it. What do you do the other half of the year?

[Russo]

a friend of mine works in Africa for SLB at months at at time, im sure it'll drive you nuts!

[SSE 4 2SS]

Originally Posted by speedster

Funny stuff guys. Sorry it is so close to the truth...

Well, just think of the "other" 6 months.

I live for the other six...

Originally Posted by motorhead

All I can say is ,it must be worth it. What do you do the other half of the year?

well, the simple answer is to spend the money until it's time to come back.... But, this time home I'll be spending time in my shop working on car stuff, and dropping my car off at the shop to have it tuned up a lil bit...nothing radical... Just wanting to improve my 60 to 160 times...Great quote speedster...

Spend a great deal of time with my wife, and as much as possible with my sons...they're grown...

In my shop is this thing I'm working on for a great friend... It's his engine and radiator covers... I'm doing a little custom work on them...and a job on him...

[SSE 4 2SS]

Originally Posted by Russo

a friend of mine works in Africa for SLB at months at at time, im sure it'll drive you nuts!

Man I can't begin to tell you how many times vie driven through race land on my way to fourchon...i guess that area has more or less died out in the last nine months or so... I'm sorry for that, hope you're doing ok down there...

[Z28RockStar]

BWAAHAHAHAHA! Coast Guard wasn't quite that bad, . . . . we had one cook, no one else allowed in the kitchen! Everything else is true though . . too true lol.

[Russo]

Originally Posted by SSE 4 2SS

Man I can't begin to tell you how many times ive driven through raceland on my way to fourchon...i guess that area has more or less died out in the last nine months or so... I'm sorry for that, hope you're doing ok down there...

business is good! it helps to be supported by so many good people in the oilfield.. local people support local business too, which is a great cultural quality... my business is on HWY 182, which, if youre going to Fourchon, you won't pass by me.. if you're going to Thibodaux you drive right in front my shop by the sugar cane plant...

if our local government had a 21st century vision of what the parish could be capable of, we would have a commercial area like Houma as well as a strong agricultural community and oilfield..

[SSE 4 2SS]

Originally Posted by Z28RockStar

BWAAHAHAHAHA! Coast Guard wasn't quite that bad, . . . . we had one cook, no one else allowed in the kitchen! Everything else is true though . . too true lol.

So like I mentioned to someone else, this means your at
Least six feet tall, so if the boat sinks you can walk to shore...

Originally Posted by Russo

business is good! it helps to be supported by so many good people in the oilfield.. local people support local business too, which is a great cultural quality... my business is on HWY 182, which, if youre going to Fourchon, you won't pass by me.. if you're going to Thibodaux you drive right in front my shop by the sugar cane plant...

if our local government had a 21st century vision of what the parish could be capable of, we would have a commercial area like Houma as well as a strong agricultural community and oilfield..

I meet and work with so many great people in the offshore community and the shore based support areas. in addition to those, the folks in Louisiana are amazing. I got an invite by a guy in Patterson that worked for a service company, and got a ride in his boat back in the swamps... We were hauling the a&& a d he headed straight for a bank, so I thought, well we break out into a gas line cut, and keep going, for over an hour, got lost twice and ended up popping out by a three barge house boat set up. It was us and three others when we got there, and within a hour or so, ere were 25 or more boats tied up alongside... The beer and food were in all you could possibly eat portions... They thought I was the neatest thing... I'm not sure some of them had ever met anyone from Texas... Heck, I'm not sure they had ever met anyone from outside the swamps...I had a great time after we got done wrestling and several of us ended up getting thrown into the swamp...I would do it again in a second...
the guys name that took me out there was Don Trahan... great guy...Great peeps..

[SDCamaro10]

Originally Posted by SSE 4 2SS

So like I mentioned to someone else, this means your at
Least six feet tall, so if the boat sinks you can walk to shore..

Sorry had to laugh! to the CG.