Maybe its just me?

Its all happening. Not here where I am, but it seems like there is a lot going on in the world right now. Syria is going balls crazy, I dont usually have much empathy for war stricken countries, because ignorance is bliss, and I'm quite frankly to selfish to care. But somewhere along the line it hit home with me, what are these people doing to each other? And what possible reason(s) could justify the brutal and savage killing of so many people? I know the reasons, but they are by no means a justification.

Torrential downpour has struck Japan, I need not to mention that this is very shortly after the series of natural disasters that occurred less than a year ago. People are dying here too.

The new Batman film, (which I have yet to see) will be remembered for completely the wrong reasons. A single individual managed to destroy the lives of a few hundred people within a few seconds. At the cinema. More people dead.

As of a good life I have, the more I hear and see about these things, I feel less of a need to buy a new stuff, to worry about trivial things, to be false and facetious, to be co-dependent, to worry about, to worry about materialistic possessions in general, stress about my "luxury problems" ( I blogged about this a while ago. You can find it here too.) All of this seems superfluous in comparison to the real problems we have in the world right now. And no, I'm not becoming an activist hippie. But it doesn't hurt to be aware.

The Tour de France is finally over, I could honestly not care less, but its been drawing in mindless Lance Armstrong fanatics to screens everywhere for the last however long. Admittedly though, after the last however many days when ever I look up and its on, I think I should start cycling. But then I wake up and realise I'm not a mindless nincompoop. France, really? The highlight of the year in the cycling world is riding the lightest possible bike through the most arrogant country in the world? Here is my suggestion. Firstly, choose a decent country. Make it exciting for the viewer as well as the riders, for all I know the entire race could have taken place in Yorkshire or Milwaukee. It all looks the same. Why not change the concept a bit, Tour de Township. Cycle from Guguletu in Cape Town to Hillbrow in Johannesburg, going through every informal settlement en route. ( For my international readers: Google  Image search these places.) That would be exciting! I wonder how many bikes would actually still have wheels on them when entering Jozi. Secondly make the bike heavier. Whats the point in having super lightweight, dry carbon weave space frame bike? Isn't this meant to be challenging? All bikes should be homemade by the riders themselves, on a budget of no more US$ 300. That will also teach these sweaty, protein juiced, anorexic men to do something else than shave their legs. Girls. I will buy a case of beer to the first man to cycle from Guguletu to Hillbrow on a homemade bicycle.

The Olympics have started. Not that I could care about that either. Not until they start accepting real sports. IOC, if you stumble across this, take note: Wakeskating, downhill skating, surfing, rope access, bouldering, wingsuiting, free diving, and some sort of fighting with weapons that is not fencing would be a great to the very blah line up you offer already. How often does the Olympics take place, 4 years. You would think they would have built up something in the four year time span that would get people excited? No, the same crap every year. Can this black dude run faster than all these white dudes? Yes. Can this black dude do this better than that white dude? Most probably. As soon as black people learn to master swim as fast as they run and ice hockey, every American icon sport will be dominated by black dudes. End of story. Prime example, I just watched the opening minutes of Norway VS Brasil in mens beach volleyball. Come now Norway, what are you honestly thinking? Of all the countries they could have been paired up with, Brasil? It was entertaining at least. I think they teach kids in Brasil how to spike a volleyball before they learn to read. Norway doesn't really have an acceptable beach that I have seen yet, and if they do, its probably in a place that only gets three days of sun per year. Stick to skiing.

I'm sure there is another thing that I was meant to offer my two cents on. But for the love of nicotine dependence, I cant think of it. In the mean time here are some pictures from the job I'm currently running on Visund. First pictures from my Iceland trip will be going up soon!!! Stay tuned in! Take it easy. N.

11.2 tonnes of heave compensation cylinder on its way to the drill floor from the pipe deck.

Lifting the cylinder through the derrick to mount it in the crown. 

Slinging, clearance was down to 20cm in some places.

Crown block on its way up. All 10.4 tonnes of it. You can see the drillfloor and the rotary table below.

Test lift with crown block.

Contrary to popular belief, I do actually work every once in a while.

Our night team mounting the guide sheave for the fast line.

iPhone-o-graphy part 2.

Hahaha. I just used Google Chrome to translate my last blog into Norwegian. What a laugh. I remember once at work offshore we spent the better part of half an hour laughing at Google Translate saying perverse things in a Norwegian Stephen Hawkins voice. Small things amuse small minds huh.

Hopefully going back to Reykjavik in September to teach at the Reykjavik Fashion Academy for a few days. Really excited about that. For the meantime though I have slightly more bigger issues to worry about. After completely crashing out from sleep deprivation yesterday, I flopped into bed at 9:30PM, content just to be horizontal for more than 30 minutes, my peaceful slumber was violently brought to a halt at just after 3:00AM after the general alarm went off. ( There is no different alarm for major or minor accidents, same flashing lights and infernal pitched beeping regardless) The first thing that races through your mind is: Oh Fuck. Nothing more, nothing less. Just that. Either something has gone wrong on a catastrophic level in which case you have to act smartly and quickly or something has gone wrong on a  catastrophic level and its too late to act at all. The next thing that floated into my semi-conscious state of mind was: Where is my survival suit? And do I have time to put it on? Right. Its under my bed, and lets wait and hear for what the platform chief says next. First sign of the word gas rolling off his tongue, and Im out of here. That suit will keep you warm for 8 hours in frigid sea water, but will not help for 30 seconds in a room being pumped full of hydrogen sulphide. I always think the worst, that way when it is the worst, at least you've had a few seconds to mentally prepare for what happens next. My plan was to gun it down the hall, make for the stairs and get to either the helideck or my lifeboat station quick sticks.

Luckily the word gas never saw the light of day. The words sewerage, 1st floor and problem did though. A gentle wave of relief lapped over my now cold sweat ridden and tense body. At least the problem wasn't going to affect me immediately. You can safely assume as well that all is well here considering I had time to plot out and type this post. As much I love blogging, if I had to jump into the sea, you wouldn't hear about here. CNN, BBC, or the local newspaper might be the best options to keep your eyes on.

Turns out the entire sewerage system on the first floor decided to give up on life in the early hours of the morning, spewing out its contents to the bathroom floor of every cabin simultaneously. Keep in mind there are +-30-35 cabins on the 1st floor, this meant big shit. (Sorry, I had to. That isn't the last one either). I was on the 4th floor, but with one peek out down the stairwell I could smell the problem. Ventilation in the living quarter is quite good, its over pressured for safety reasons, which means the air circulation is better than a normal room with normal atmospheric pressure. This proved to be a serious issue 20 minutes after the initial porcelain volcano erupted. The aftershocks were quite powerful and its 2:35PM and the stench is still very much there. This meant that the entire 1st floor was evacuated, all the unnecessary personal were sent home by chopper and the people that needed to sleep were found rooms by 10AM this morning. The hotel manager must have had fun organising that by herself at 7AM. Three choppers in and out within a 1hour time frame. One of my colleagues was unfortunate enough to have been caught in the shitstorm. This meant that today was a write off for our entire team, as Statoil's rules state you must have at least 6 hours uninterrupted sleep off-shift. So he has had a pretty shitty time and been trying to nap the entire day while I have been doing other bits and pieces, namely editing iPhone pictures. Here's the second installment of my Reykjavik Romance iPhone-o-graphy set. Have a good day internet. N

The view from the harbour.

My two Norwegian buddies; Jo and Harald, good dudes, good vibes.

Clowns

Icelandic lanscape

Blue lagoon.

Free show in the middle of town.

Lobster and tiger prawn pasta.

Sunrise after a days shooting.

The wall of fame at Elite.

The studio at Elite.

Wardrobe for the shoot, 500.000 Icelandic Kronurs worth.

Maria getting made up.

I did that. I mistook the little Chevy for my bakkie.

Kristin Lilja watching me dig the car out of the beach sand.

Good-bye Reykjavik, Hello North-Atlantic.

So you might have guessed I'm back in Norway, well more accurately floating on a towering steel monstrosity in the lower half of the North-Atlantic off the coast of Norway. Quite a drastic change from the metropolitan romance I had the last ten days. Everything is far less sexy out here. Definitely.

I thought I should just bring ya'll up to speed on what I got up to and the nightmare that has been my life the last couple of days. Lets rewind back to Iceland. The shooting, OMFG!!! I shot pictures like a boss!!! Really excited to get working on these and get them out. Something very different to what I usually shoot, but you will definitely see that I had a finger in it. The hair, the make up, the drama, the love, the stress, the beauty, the sweat, the stuck rental car on the beach at 2:00AM. All of it. I want it all again. I've been on a kinda low after all of that. And I know why. Its like Laird Hamilton (If you dont know who he is, just google his name and check the images.) said when asked what he does when there are no 30+ft waves to surf. " Its like if you're a dragon slayer, and all of a sudden there are no more dragons to slay, what could you possibly do that compares to dragon slaying?"

I am such a perfectionist with everything when I shoot, composition, exposure, mood, colour, texture, and overall feeling. I put myself under such pressure to get the shot I'm after, I get buzzed off it. I literally go into another "stealth-brainwave-ninja-monk" state of mind. What can I do that gets me off like that that isn't shooting pictures?

Anyway, heavily sleep and sanity deprived fearing for my sexual orientation after being surrounded by women for 3 days in a row. I returned to dreary Norway with the feeling that my heart was still on a bench on a busy street in downtown Reykjavik. I was absolutely destroyed from the last three days, so tired that my fingernails and my teeth were sore. For real, never been that tired before. Then a quick 24 hours back in Trondheim I jumped on a plane at 5:00AM to get to another plane to catch a helicopter to flip out to my home for the next 14days, Visund. Before I go on with the actual point of this post, I'm going to drop a picture of Visund right about here, regular programming will continue shortly.

To put it in perspective, its about 110m x 110m deck space. Pic courtesy of :fylkesmagasinet.no

Right, the actual point of this post was to show some pictures. Some different ones aswell though, for a change instead of walking around looking like every other tourist with a DSLR and monster telephoto lens, I decided to use my iPhone. And because I'm not a hipster and care about how far off the line the saturation slider goes, I didn't use Instagram! I just could bring myself to do it. I tried one, and the vignette and the grain and the white balance warmth came on in such strong bounds in leaps, I couldn't help but laugh and think how is it this become so popular? Maybe to some iPhoneographers I over stepped the line and actually used a legit editing program (Lightroom) to jazz my pictures. What you think? Should iPhone pictures be edited strictly on iPhone software?

Anyway, think about it for a while, here's some pictures of what I did when I didn't have the 5D glued to my hand. More to come soon. N

He actually managed to fit the pint glass in his mouth.

Possibly my twin Icelandic brother. And a newly made girlfriend Sigga.

Yeah, that happened.

Steak burger and double thick choc shake. Quality.

Live DJ's and MC's almost everyday in the park. Good vibes.

A fairly large duckpond in downtown Reykjavik.

Symmetry, kinda.

Cars and stuff.

JUNGLE CAT!!! saw this on the way to the OMAM show.

The other side of the duckpond

Belt sushi.

Islandsk førfest.

Birthday girl.

Foos.

Kim Jong is illin'.