Today is the day after the storm. "Once more unto the breach, dear friends..." "Tomorrow in the battle, think of me" We were setting up everything for the show, booths, merchandise, exhibitions... My job was to assemble the gift bags. With every ticket, people gets a bag full of freebies, including a comic book. We are going to be giving away "A Dame to Kill For" or "Hell and Back" from the Sin City series among others. So we had to bag 10000 (Ten thousand) bags. I spent 9 hours, to make about 1500 myself, and I am destroyed. Tomorrow I am waking up at 6 to go pick up Steve Rude and hiw wife to the airport, and then the fun begins!

Last week´s friday was my friend Nuria´s birthday. I have not been able to see her yet, but I made her a present. It is a top with a copy of a little piece of a Gustav Klimt painting: Danaë. I hope she will like it.

Ok, so today we had our official presentation at Fnac. I expected something different, as these two comedians that are going to be helping us with the promotion were going to be there. They promised to go in disguise and improvise, but they did not, and it was disappointing. If not for my natural talent and sense of humour, people would have died of boredom :)

You can see me here with the two comedians Javivi (to my left) and Tafallé (obviously, to my right), and then with Alfonso Azpiri, the great artist and creator of Lorna and Mot.

Black Rice. Arroz negro. Rice coloured with squid ink.


Today we went to eat paella for dinner, to the famous restaurant "La Barraca". The guys really enjoyed it. To me, it was the last chance to have a quiet dinnerwith just a few people before the rollercoaster starts going down tomorrow. At 19:00 hours I have the presentation in FNAC. Two comedians will be there to support us. They are famous actors in Spain, but I have never heard of them before. We will see, they say they will go in disguise.

Chicken and seafood paella. "Paella Mixta"

Ok, so Christmas is officially here. If the big department stores have the decoration on, then it is official. And El Corte Inglés has Cortylandia on, so here we go! Let´s all start buying useless presents, and spending money with the excuse of Christmas! C´mon, after all it is only once a year. That is what the sellers want you to think, it is only once a year, it is Christmas, it is ok if you waste your money. Does anybody remember what Christmas is all about? The son of a carpenter was born in a barn, because they could not pay a 5 star inn in Bethlem, the only place with free rooms. It should be the other way around, you know? As a mean of protest, this year, I am making an umprecedented thing. I am making Christmas presents to all my friends. I am donating 10 euros on behalf of each one of them to an orfan children house in Lithuania. Donations welcome.

Expocomic 2005, Madrid´s comic book convention is almost here!! It wil start next thursday, December the 1st, but we are ll in full convention mode now. My hard work period has begun. I will have to go out for lunch and dinner with them every day since they arrive, I will have to go to the museums, to tapas bars, to flamenco shows. Then bring back all the sketches and free comics, the autographs… It is a hard job, but it has to be done.
Our first guest arrived a few days ago, and we have been touring around town. Today was specially nice. We went to the “teleferico”, then to watch the sunset at the Debod Temple, and finally stuffed our faces for dinner in a very nice restaurant. Along the days, you will see how the intensity of my activities grow exponentially.

Mark Wheatley and his wife Carol on the Teleferico.

This is the Temple. A present of the Egyptian people to the people of Spain. How beautiful it is love among nations, isn´t it?

An Egiptian sunset over Madrid, as seen from Debod´s temple.

Well, this was not dinner, but it was in the restaurant. The oranges are a bad scale to compare with, as they were also massive.

Christmas lights already in the streets of Madrid. You can almos smell Christmasis coming. 28 days and counting down, train your fingers to un-wrap your loot!!

But the big star of this trip, the memory that will last forever, that will haunt me in my nightmares, that horrible vision that I can see every time I close my eyes... is the fish heads...
Most of the drilling crew on this rig was indonesian, and in every meal there was one indonesian dish in the choice. Too frecuently, this dish was fish head stew. I kept telling them I don ´t eat them unless my mum makes them for me, nobody can stuff the gills with fish butts as she does.

One of the star moments of my hitch in Sakhalin was the well testing. I had never been on a rig to see that, and it was really cool. After the well is drilled, it is neccesary to test the oil and gas flow out of it. The gas needs to be bured out, as there is no use for it. The oil that comes out is kept for chemical studies and also as souvenir for the crew if you manage, as I did, to smuggle some out of the rig. These are pics of the flare used to burn the gas, and how the rig looked like at night when they were lighting the flare and sparying water all over to prevent fires.

Red sun rising over Sakhalin in August 2005.

Sunset over Sakhalin, early August 2005. And no, I did not take this photo from the Windows 2000 desktop themes.

Sea Lions as seen from one of the crewchange boats. The photo does not make them justice, as they were really close, and they came out of the water with freshly fished salmon on their mouths.

Look carefully, and you will see a volcano, right under the rotor blade. Do you see the rim of the crater, or the inside mound?

One of my favourite photos of the trip:



Once in the north on the island, in the city called Okha, the airport lookd like this:

Okha, a city Awarded the Order of the Badge of Honour for its unvauable help in developing the oil industry in the island, as this sign proves. The city is at the far background:

But the first time I went to the north of the island, I did not fly there. I boarded the rig in the south, from the city of Korsakov. The rig was then towed over 5 days to its final location. This cool picture with the rig on the background, was taken by my buddy Jim Howard:

Last summer, I lived one of the greatest, if not the greatest adventure in my life. I spent almost five months working and travelling around Russia. My job took me offshore Sakhalin, and island north of Japan. I actually volunteered to work there. I had, for a long time, wanted to travel to Russia, and this was my chance to travel there for free, and to visit a place that otherwise, would be unreachable for me. I got a year-long multi entry visa, a border pass to be allowed to travel to the north of the island, still a military zone, and I was ready! The trip to get ther from Madrid could take just three days, but thanks to the inefficiency of my company, it takes up to five, as I was force to stay overnight in London before flying to Moscow. Domodedovo airport is quite cool.

This cool Tupolev presides the airport. What happens later is not so cool, though. Russian internal flights are worse than busses. Crammed in a tiny seat, surrounded by drunk russian men who could have showers more often, the flight to Sakhalin lasts 9 hours. I have taken that flight 8 times altogether, and it is something I am not looking forward to next year.

The city of Yuzhno Sakhalinsk is not so bad, altough we were told it is quite dangerous for foreigners.

This was the Glory Square, just accross the street from our hotel, Yubilienaya. And bellow, you can see me with my friend Lenin.

A few years ago, I would have been imprisoned just to see what I saw there, not to mention taking photos of it:

More to come...

This picture is from Denmark, 2003. There was a month in which we had several tornadoes. This one is much bigger than it looks like in the photo. By the size and distance from the rig of the boat, we estimate it was at least 30 meters wide and some 450 meters long, or more. We had no idea of what would happen if it hits the rig, but it was coming to us before it vanished!

My job consists in long periods of boredom, spiced with occasional periods of frantic activity. So to fight boredom, I have to make my brain work, to have some fun on the rig.

Like this Halloween, when I went treat or tricking around the rig with my home made mask. I got lots of candy, specially on the drill floor.

Or that day I decided to practice the "Headless Mudlogging" The photo has not been modified digitally on any form.

But of course, the star of all my stunts on the rig has been the Extreme Ironing. I recommend everyone to visit www.extremeironing.com. The extreme Ironing is a sport which combines the comfort of a well pressed shirt with the the trills of extreme sports:

It is just too bad we did not have cameras when we did the Mudlogging-in-grandma-style-underwear, or the Star Wars storm trooper outfits, or the super heroes Miguelman and Robin. Don´t ask, please.

Ok, let me tell you a little about my job. I am a geologist, but unlike Ross from Friends, I am not talking about dinosaurs all the time. I am not like Alan Grant from Jurassic Park either, I don´t go to digsites, or wear cool clothes. Until last month I was working as Mudlogging Geologist, and now I am not a geologist anymore, but a Data Engineer. I work on offshore oil rigs, for a French company called "Geoservices". Over the last 5 months I have worked offshore Sakhalin, in Russia, on a rig called Transocean Legend, but before that, I worked for 4 years in Denmark, on the Ensco 101.

I work inside a container, that can be removed easily from the rig and put anywhere else, it is a plug and play office.

And as you can see, I work hard!!

This mornig I went ouf for a walk. When I was reaching Arenal Street I met the head of what it seems to be a demostration. Of course! I told myself, today is the 30th anniversary of the death of the fascist dictator who ruled Spain with shaking fist for 39 years. This must be the typical remembrance demonstration.

After thinking for a while, I realized it was not that, even if the participants in the demonstration looked like the ones who will be in the other demonstration

Madrid was for many centuries a stop in the way for the sheep herds traveling from north to south in winter and viceversa in summertime, in search for fresh food. The main streets in the center were given a Royal Grant (Cañada Real) so cattle has preference over cars and people. Of course this is unpractical these days, and only one sunday a year they allow sheep to run around free in the streets, to keep the tradition alive. It was a good choice of date, today. Heh heh.

This is a microcopic photo of the rocks I look at in the microscope, at work. It is sand from Sakhalin, from about 270 meters deep. The sand is mainly fine rounded quartz crystals, very much like beach sand. It comes from delta-type deposits. The "snail" in the middle of the photo is a foraminifera, whose inner chambers are filled with pyrite, an iron sulfide created thanks to the activity of organisms in the rocks. The gray stuff to the foram�s left side is also pyrite. The black bits under the foram are pieces of wood, that we also found, in mint condition, contained in the same sediment, which also indicates that these sands were deposited, covered and buried very quickly and with no air enclosed in them, so the wood has been preserved in pristine condition. 

Today, I went visiting my niece Nora. It was her first birthday last week, and I missed it because I was in Russia. She is 1 year and 9 days now. 

These are some other fetish hanging from my wall. The Lenin bust comes from one of the public schools in Vilnius, Lithuania. One of my friends got it for me this year. The flag I got in Gatchina, Russia, and it is a communist award for labour.

I collect orders and medals of the Soviet Union. I have millitary, but my favourites are for labour and civil merit. Here are some in my collection. 

This is my high-altitude soviet union jet fighter pressurized helmet. Have I mention I love the Soviet Union and that I collect fetish related to it?  

This is a link to my company´s magazine where you can read about my trip to Sakhalin. I wrote that article. I will post anecdotes about the trip really soon.

http://www.geoservices.com/pdf/geoworld/GW38-2005-Oct.pdf

This is the cannon that started it all. The most powerful weapon in the world. One blank shot, and 70 years of desaster. 

That will be me, reflected on one of the Aurora�s bullseyes. I always wanted to visit the Cruiser Aurora, in Saint Petersburg. Fo all you who don�t know, a blank shot from this boat was the signal to assault the Winter Palace, and thus starting the Revolution in Russia. 

This is Dyma, the baby mamooth found in SIberia in the 70s. It is perfectly mummyfied, and they even made a cartoon about it, Pesnia Mamotionak, if I am not mistaken. From the Zoology Museum in Saint Petersburg, across the river Neve from the Armitage State Museum. Recommended! Only 60 rubles. October 2005. 

When I was in Moscow, Ireally wanted to see this. Lubyanka. Former headquarters of the KGB, and transit prison for political deportees to Siberia during the big purges by Stain in the 40s and 50s. Solzenitsin was here. This photo is from October 2005. 

This are not crop circles, but lakes over the North of Sakhalin. From the helicopter, in my final flight to shore, before being stucked in the cold at the Okha airport terminal. 

This was the typical sunrise in Sakhalin, Russia, when we were not in the middle of a snow storm or a typhoon. This is from September 2005. 

In May I had to go to SIngapore for a meeting to prepare the job in Russia. This is all I remember from it. The al you can eat sushi buffet at the hotel every day.  

This was in London in June 2005. I visited the offices of Egmont publishing, holder of the Winnie the Pooh Copyrights. It was just too bad it was Tigger�s day off! 

This was during that training course. 

This was in Dundee, Scotland. My company flew me there for a training course in March. When I arrived to the hotel, I found out they put me in a room with a colleague, Antonio, Italian. And we also found out the people in our company assume we are gay, since there was only one bed in that room. But it was ok, it was just for two weeks. 

This was at my second home, Madrid�s Barajas airport. 

Alex with porn star Celia Blanco, our guest. I also got some of her underwear as fet... souvenir 

My friend Alex, with fellow interpreter Gema, artist extraordinaire Carla and Daniel, her writer. 

Me with Stan Sakai in Expocomic 2004

So, after I came back from a blitz trip to Russia, I can update you on some more news.
As you probably know, either because you have been my guests during the show, or because I keep pestering you with anecdotes from the convention, I work at Expocomic, Madrid´s comic book convention, as Guest Manager, Coordinator, Ruler, Dictator, Inquisitor, or call it whatever you want. If you have been my guest you know what I mean.
My job is to contact comic book authors, and invite them to our show. I have to lie about how good I will be to them, how cool the city and the show is, so they agree to come to Madrid, and once they are here, make them sign autographs for countless hours without pause.
I have to take them around town and on day trips, take them out to dinner, for tapas, to flamenco shows, to museums. It is a hard job, but it has to be done.
This year´s show will be from December 1st to 4th, and I will try to post news and photos every day. Usually those days I get home late and wake up early to lok after my guests, but I will do my best. In the photo section of my profile there are photos of last year´s show.
You can check us out at www.expocomic.com
Some of our guest for this year will be Steve Rude, Alfonso Azpiri, Mark Weathly, Chris Claremont, Víctor Santos, Carla Berrocal, Carlos Pacheco, Michel Durand...
Of course these names mean nothing to you unless you read comics, so what you should do is visit us, and star reading! We give a free comic with your ticket, only because we are so cool.
So don´t forget to check the pics. It may be possible to post photos with each blog entry, but being the dummy I am, I doubt I can learn how to do it without the proper training course.
So, Have fun!
Poka!

Hi,
Why a blog, why now? I realize now that four months ago would have been the perfect moment to star my on line diary, when my Russian adventure began. It was only last night when I came back home after my friends Klaus and Yoli got enaged that I had an epifany and decided to get started on my retrospective diary. And hopefully, I will have the will, and the chance to go on, and my entries will not start with:"Oh, sorry for not updating my blog, but I have been so busy". Mainly it will depend on how easy it is for me to access the internet while I am at work.
So, what was so cool about the "Russian Adventure". Well, after more than 4 years working on offshore oil rigs on the North Sea, I finally got a stint somewhere else. In Sakhalin, an island in the North-East of Russia, in the Sea of Ojhokts, between Siberia and Kamchatka.
Many adventures, lots of new things, that I will post in photos for all to see, and more, of course.
For the moment, tomorrow I will be travelling to Russia for another week, and I will probably come back with more photos. I doubt I will have internet access there, but I will update it when I come back.
Did I mention I work as a Geologist? That is my job on the rigs.
I have another "job" if oyu want to call it like that. I help organizing a comic-book convention, "Expocomic", in Madrid. My job is to look after the guest artist, contact them, get cool drawings from then, taking them around the city... it´s hard work, but it has to be done. The next convention will be held from December 1st to December 4th, and I will keep everyone updated.
I will try to do this both in English and Spanish. My Russian is not good enough yet, and my Japanese is quite rusty. But I will do my best.
For now, I have to go and eat, but I will be back.
Have fun!

Getting in the harness 

At the club, inBeto and Nuria�s wedding, in Tafaya, Navarra 

Miguel in Leningrad 

On the brige, De �rbol a �rbol