Record breaking 3 Ph II ESAs in Sarawak

Came across the following picture from the webspace...can't remember where I kidnapped the picture. The picture is an airphoto of Simunjan town in Sarawak.

Reminds me of my time back in early 2006, whopping 3 Shell retail stations in one week, completed a record of 15 wells - as part of Phase 2 ESA (Environmental Site Assessment). The other 2 stations were located at Lundu and Serian.

Serian was the first stop, followed by Simunjan and Lundu. There wasn't any decent hotel, as I was lucky if I can have a bathroom in the 'motel'.

Working at Serian was the hardest. Two layers of asphalt road, with the last layer of crusher run at about 0.7-08.m (if i can remember correctly), which is beyond the length of electric corer that belonged to the driller. The petrol station was small, next to a busy main road just on the brink of the station and always occupied with motorists at daytime. Due to safety reasons, I have decided to instruct the driller to work at night, and boy it was tough. Two drilling points next to main road and with 2 generations of tarmac. Head driller almost gave up, but I took over and ordered his workers to manually hack the tarmac. Bought KFC and paid the accommodation at nearby motel with my own pocket money, to compensate and reward them for completing 5 wells in just 2 days.

Next stop was Simunjan, not too far away from Seri Aman, which is much a bigger town. Completed 5 wells in less than 6 hours... terror or not?? And the YBM still sits comfortably on the lorry throughout the drilling works. Nope, I didn't cheat - I was working smart. Why do you need to use YBM to drill in unconsolidated alluvium? No need lorr... so I requested hand augering lorr... kao tim!! Spent another day to map out the landuse surrounding the station the following day, and made a trip to Lundu.

Lundu town was smaller than Serian, but much more 'equipped' than Simunjan. Adopted the same drilling strategy as in Simunjan, and completed 5 wells in less than 1.5 days. Another half day spent on landuse survey, and travelling back all the way to Simunjan to pickup one sampling bottle which I forgot to take earlier!!

Hitched

Hitched. Yeah... on golfing.

Wife bought a pack of golf balls today, in addition to 10 fluorescent yellow ones which I bought at Setapak driving range yesterday. The white ones are cheaper by fifty cents each, and they were actually consist of different brands - ranged from Wilson, Top-Flite, Pinnacle, Volvik & Everio. The earlier batch of golf balls, 10 in total, were all used up in my ever first 18 holes (2 rounds of 9 holes) at Titiwangsa Golf Club PDRM. Used up meaning I have lost the balls in 2 flights of golf there, losing branded balls like Titleist, Nike, etc., which cannot be avoided since I have no idea on the location of the water hazards and failed to control the momentum of my swings, resulting in out of bound locations (including main roads and adjacent fairway) - which easily makes up 10 out of the 12 balls I've lost there. One or two could be lost due to tall grass there (outlining the fairway) or simply just 'plucked' into the soggy ground.

The aim is to reduce number of lost balls to a minimum, perhaps 6 or less would be a realistic target. So before my next golfing outing, I have to get prepared with my swings.... need to 'vary' them, if you know what I mean. Being a beginner without an experienced trainer by my side, I have to rely on my own assessment of my swings (see where the balls go with different approaches and golf clubs) and also based on my memory. My memory is my best friend at the moment, since I was actually 'trained' back in the mid 90s, where I used to work at the golf section at Isetan in Lot 10. There was this golf swing equipment to guide my swing, and I had fellow colleagues to correct me when I whacked the ball wrongly at the small 'test driving' room. The room consist of a net with a bull's eye in the middle, and lots of empty boxes at its back to cushion the impact of the balls. I still remember my morning routines when I was working there while waiting for my STPM results; getting hold of a used driver and a 5 iron, and whack about 5 balls or more before the mall opens officially at 10am.

As for my swing and the preparation for my next outing, I have to start using other clubs which I am rather apprehensive to use - the hybrids 3 & 4, as well as iron 6 to 9. The hybrids looked rather weird - small club face and the bulge behind... it is just like a cross breed between a wood and an iron. But definitely I would prefer to have iron 2 to 4, rather than having the hybrids. What to do... the hybrids came in a package which I bought last year - Wilson's golf bag with a driver and wood 3, coupled with iron 5 to 9, PW, SW and a putter. Haven't got used to the putter yet... kinda heavy and hard to control the impact on the ball during putting... perhaps I should get a PING!

Next planned trip would be a golf course in Bentong, but apparently I have to give this outing a skip since I will be committing my time on the other hobby, which is photography. Ironically, it seems that a lot of people are taking up this too, perhaps because DSLR cameras seemed to be more affordable these days. There's a hot air balloon festival coming up soon - just look out for it in the internet.

And yeah by the way, this is my first blog posting for this year. Am wondering if anybody out there is reading or following my blog.