Day 4–Notes on Dining

Dinner tonight was interesting. Tandoori chicken was on the menu. Bold and ambitious! The execution was a bit lacking though and the chicken turned out to be more like an Indian themed roast quarter-chicken, but it was still pretty good. Roast beef was a bit dry…not sure why I felt like I needed 2 meats, maybe it’s because I’m usually surrounded by vegetarians.

Tandoori chicken!?!

My co-worker suggested I mention the “No Removal of Food” policy. As the name suggests, no food may be removed from the dining rooms. It seems a bit odd that someone can’t take a snack back to their room to nibble on, but we’re in the middle of the wilderness, there are wild animals…including wild rodents. The more food we have lying around, the more problems we’ll have with rodents. I’m happy to follow the “No Removal of Food” policy. Chris did point out that people are allowed to leave the dining room with ice cream (there is an ice cream cooler in the main dining room). Chris believes this is because ice cream isn’t food…or the ice cream at camp isn’t food…

It’s 6:33pm and I’m going to bed. Getting up at 4am is tiring.

Day 4–Site Lunch

Workers pack their lunches in the “bag-up” rooms at camp. The building trades workers typically keep their lunches in designated lunch rooms with limited fridge space, so some of them use lunch coolers (like for picnics!). Office staff have a bit more fridge space so I can grab stuff that requires refridgeration. I usually go for sandwiches, beef pies, carrots & celery, yogurt, and cookies. The sandwiches aren’t bad…after they’ve gone through the panini press.

Suvarna charges the new guy $1 to use her “Big Boss Grill”, but since I’m really likeable, she lets me use it for free.

A panini press turns this mediocre sandwich into a glutenous and meaty culinary delight.

My office mate makes a salad by breaking carrots into a container filled with lettuce and other vegetables. He doesn’t have a knife.

Some people get really creative with lunch at site. The kitchen has at least two slow cookers. Someone even made chili today. Note that this isn’t just reheated chili, I watched someone throw in the ingredients for chili at 6:15am this morning.

Day 4, AM

4:05 am
I’m awake, but I’m not happy about it. The sun isn’t quite up yet, but it’s still light outside. If you’re coming to work at Kearl Lake from another country be aware: at summer solstice, there is approximately 18 hours of daylight, but at winter solstice, there is approximately 18 hours of darkness. You get used to both extremes. Born and raised in Edmonton, I’ve seen long nights in the winter (not as extreme as Kearl Lake). It gets a bit tiring, but it makes you better appreciate spring and summer.

Here’s a wonderful picture of the road signs to Wapasu and Kearl Lake. It was taken from the bus. I didn’t ask the 50 other passengers if I could stop the bus, get out, and take a proper photograph.

Day 3–We Have a Winner At Dinner!

I visited the “Cardio Gym” tonight for a run on the treadmill. No pictures though, no one wants me taking pictures of them working out. 

 

I needed to run. I think I’ve been overdoing it with the cookies in my lunch, and the sausage rolls, and the pastries, and more cookies.

Dinner

Wooooo! I ate light after my workout, just some vegetables and roast potatoes with caesar salad. The salad had a prepackaged dressing from Kraft, so nothing really special. The vegetables were actually pretty good, and it looks like they were prepared fresh, not cooked from frozen. There were squash strips in the mix as well as 2 different kinds of string beans. The potatoes were outstanding! Perfectly cooked and perfectly seasoned, not too greasy, not too soft, not too hard…just perfect!

 

Laundry Night

Doing laundry is easier than bringing extra clothes. Tonight it was do-or-die, if I didn’t do laundry tonight I wouldn’t have gonch for tomorrow. 

Each floor has 5 washers and 5 dryers. They’re actually quite nice, they look fairly new. If you’re coming up to site, set a timer on the dryer, don’t go for the preset dry time. 

 

Day 3–We Still Need Lions and Tigers

If I haven’t already made it clear, Wapasu Lodge is isolated, and remote, and in the wilderness. We have bear sightings…

 

I see a caution sign up every few days. I guess we’re in their territory. If the bears become a problem, we have a few options: teach the bears yoga, have the bears play soccer, we could pray for the bears to go away, or as a last resort, we could send the jiujitsu guys to beat up the bear (I’m kidding, I love animals…except sock puppets). Bears can’t play guitar because they don’t have opposable thumbs. I guess a bear could join AA, if they had a problem…

Day 3–The Office

My name is Dean, I work at site (that’s funny if you’ve seen this video). Seriously, there is an office at site. The office consists of countless ATCO trailers stuck together to make some sort of complex that wouldn’t be out of place in some sort of post apocalyptic survivalist movie. It’s not too bad though, I work with some fun people, there’s free coffee, a few fridges and some microwaves.

This is my superfun office mate, Brandon. I can just barely see the top of his head over the monitors. Sometimes I talk to him only to realize he’s not really there.

Here’s a little secret…sometimes I wear tie-dyed socks under my workboots.

Day 3 AM, Wapasu Lodge–Notes

The point of all these inane blog posts is to convey to my friends and family what’s it’s like to work “up north”. An all inclusive lodge with exercise facilities, multiple dining rooms, games rooms and a guitar night sounds like some sort of luxury resort. I’m not staying at a luxury resort. I hope I’ve been able to properly communicate that.

Oh, and if you’re curious, here’s my breakfast…

The Lounge

The lounge is where I hang out in the morning, waiting for Brass Alley to open. There are a number of card tables here, but I don’t think they’re used. Note the fireplace on the left. Makes it feel like a ski lodge in the Swiss Alps, except for the 5000+ construction workers.

Fancy? Yes?

Day 2 PM, Wapasu Lodge–So Tired…

Who would have thought getting up at 4am would be so tiring? At least I had an adequate dinner of snapper fillet, souvlaki, spinach salad and rice (grade C-). Now, back to my room to collapse on the bed.

The Room

This is where the magic happens, or in other words, this is where I hang out when I’m not working or eating. 

I mentioned previously that there are a number of activities to do at camp in the evenings. Pool, ping-pong, work out rooms, movie nights, guitar jam sessions, etc… The instructor led activities are led by people who work on site during the day. People want and need to get out of their rooms at night because, as you can see, the rooms are small. Quite small. I think 10’x10′. If I didn’t blog in my room, I think I’d go quite mad. 

My friends and co-workers who read this know I’m an avid (if somewhat incompetent) jiujitsu practitioner, so seeing this poster got me a bit excited…and then I saw the hours. Ya, 2:15 in the afternoon is going to cut into my work day a bit. I don’t think I’d be able to get permission to leave site early for jiujitsu classes. 

Time for bed. Any questions?

 

Day 2 AM, Wapasu Lodge-Brass Alley

Up at 4am again, clean up for the day and head down for breakfast.

Cereal and toast. I wasn’t in the mood for bacon, sausage and eggs with extra bacon. Maybe tomorrow.

The bus ride out was challenging today. A gentleman substantially larger than me sat next to me. It was extremely uncomfortable. The ~40 minute bus ride felt more like a half-day journey.

Brass Alley

To access the Kearl Lake project site, workers have to swipe their ID cards at security turnstiles. This is commonly called Brass Alley.

Wapasu Lodge Brass Alley in the morning

“Brass Alley” is a construction term from the previous century. Construction workers were assigned brass tags, typically numbered, which they would place on a peg board when they came on the job site. They would then retrieve their tag when they left for the day. Brass tags were used to track workers’ attendance before swipe cards.

Today, magnetic swipe cards replace brass tags and turnstiles replace a guy working at a brass tag table, but the intent is still the same. Workers are not permitted through the turnstiles until the lights above the doors turn green. The lights go green at 5:20am, at which time, approximately 500 workers (by my estimation) from my lodge (Wapasu East, but there are 4 lodges on the site) file through Brass Alley…and then the work day begins.

Day 1, Wapasu Lodge-Evening

4:45pm Depart Kearl Lake Jobsite

Before I can actually begin my evening at camp, I have to leave site. It looks to be roughly 200–300 people lining up for the buses back to camp. I score an awesome seat, with nobody sitting next to me!

5:47pm Dinner

A leisurely trip back to camp at a maximum speed of 60 km/h brings us to camp just before 6pm. Dinner is a fabulous array of meats and starches with a few vegetable thrown in the mix. Something out-of-place is the couscous salad, which looks untouched. I get rice, beef stew, pork, mixed (frozen) vegetables, spinach salad and some sort of cake thing.

Dinner is acceptable, but barely. I’d rate it as Denny’s or Smitty’s quality. My dining companion made the meal that much more enjoyable.

Smiling Ola is a from Nigeria. He has a degree in architecture, but he decided to pursue a career in industrial construction instead. It’s nice to have dinner company. I think Ola got the same dinner as me. He was critical of the quality as well, but suggested that it’s better than getting back to camp and having to make your own dinner.

6:13pm Nightshift

I’m covering for Matt the Engineer, but nobody is covering for Dean the Engineer back in the Edmonton office. After putting in a 10 hour workday, I get ready for around 2 hours (I hope) of extra work.

7:43pm Call Home

I call my girls. They’re just getting ready for bed. I talk to them about their days, I tell them about my day, and I tell them I love them and I miss them. I know there are a lot of people in camp, a lot of them with families and I suspect similar phone calls are happening all over camp this evening.

So…that’s day 1. Any questions?