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!!
