Happy Easter everyone

No chocolate eggs for me. Balls. Hey ho, I think they'd probably be chocolate puddles by the time I'd get to eat them anyway seeing as it's over 30 here at the moment. Just to update for the next 7/8 days "here" is about 5 hours drive north-east of Bengkulu in South West Sumatra at one of our other projects. It's nearer sea level then the place I'm normally based and so is very hot and full of mosquitoes etc. Apparently there are tigers living round here (+ bears/rhinos/elephants) although I haven't met anyone who has actually seen any of them on site.

Interestingly I'm not really sure what I'm doing here. I came down because the lot I normally work with are all on their break until the 10th and there was someone who said he could use an extra pair of hands for a week or so. This sounded fine however when I changed cars 2 hours from camp (you need a 4x4 to get around here) the guy I was supposed to be working with got out of the 4x4 to get into the car I'd come in. Apparently he's on break for 2 weeks. Oh well I think I might have to use the week to get used to the head and humidity again as well as improving my still rubbish grasp of the Indonesian language.

I got here late yesterday having travelled for about 30 hours overall from when I left my hotel in Hong Kong. Thankfully I did have a short stay (about 6 hours) at Jakarta so was treated to a local hotel room which had this intriguing invitation in my room:


Not wanting to disappoint them I left a note which simply stated that I was unhappy with the lack of a treasure hunt option available on the to do list. Hopefully this will be rectified by the time I get back.

Hong Kong was entertaining with a couple of nights out to make up for the 2 days of conferences. Everyone seemed to be half dead after the 7's tournament though so it was probably a bit quieter than usual.

Just to give you an insight into the fun that is a mining conference/exhibition here is me fulfilling my role as the "token English geologist" while trying not tell the man bothering me to sod off and bother someone else. I got to talk to people from 8am-6/7pm and to be honest it gets a bit tedious after a while.

Off to play some Easter futsal apparently tomorrow. If I fall over and accidentally take out some locals can someone pay my bail?

Cheers,

Keg