The time is flying by. It is going to creep up on me and all of a sudden I will have a week to sort out my stuff and get on a plane.

I was driving through Hershey last weekend with Suz while we were taking a break from working on Saturday to get some lunch. We drove past the Hershey Theatre which had a banner out advertising Avenue Q! I had heard of Avenue Q due to one of their songs doing the rounds on youtube.

I thought about it for a few days and I decided to go. I have no idea why it took we so long to decide. The show was great and the energy of the performers was excellent. The show is done with puppets and is centered around Princeton who moves to Avenue Q in NYC to start a new job and find his purpose. Of course this did not go to plan.

The same day I went to Avenue Q, a box full of 6 surprises was waiting on my doorstep when I returned. These surprises were from Ally who had ordered me 6 cupcakes in a jar from the Bangerang Bake Shop. I am happy to say that they are very tasty and I now have only 2 left! oops

The last few days have been hell for many Victorians. The state has been ravaged by bush fires, some of which were deliberately lit. Anyone associated with lighting fires which have now claimed over 100 lives should be lined up and shot. They have destroyed so many lives and affected 1000′s more.

I have the luxury of working from PA while I continue to process data from Cuba. I say it is a luxury but it has its down falls. One of those is that I am the only core UXO person in Hershey since both Ian and Brian are on site. This means I get peppered with questions from the boss which does not allow me to get on with what I am meant to be doing.

But a change is coming…. I have had my sit down meetings with my boss and his boss to discuss my future. I went in to the meetings with the attitude that I want to move back to Australia and if that costs me my job, so be it. I ended up putting the cards on the table and after trying to convince me to stay, they got the drift that I am off.

Then came the next meeting about how I could continue to be involved with the group. I feel a bit guilty about the arrangement but I have been given a 6 month period where I will be allowed to work from Australia on an as needed basis. If it gets to a point where work is light I have agreed to tap into the time which is owed to me.

I think my boss thinks I will move back after the 6 months… I really don’t see that happening.

I hope that the company tries to hire more people. We have a good name in UXO and we have some good contracts but we simply never have plentiful resources to do everything. Every time we get a decent sized project there is a handful of people that end up doing a lot of hours to try and get the job done. If nothing is done the group is going to dissolve as key people either take up new jobs or move out of the industry.

So that’s about for now…. I promise the next post will be a bit more fun and light hearted

We have moved into a temporary office while the extensions to the main building are done. It is meant to all be done by late September but we will have to wait and see!

On Friday, when coming back from Seattle, I was flying Delta connecting through Atlanta. We arrived into Atlanta a little late due to not having the tail winds pushing us along. I was all ready to sprint between my gates but after checking the Departure Schedule, it was no longer nessesary. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 9:59pm but due to wild weather here in the US, many airlines in many airports had delayed flights. Delta were very good about everything. They kept us posted and expained how our flight was delayed and where our plane was. They handed out blankets, snacks and drinks to everyone. We finally left Atlanta at 2am, arriving into Hershey a bit before 4am.

The schedule has firmed up a bit more and it looks like I am going to Lowry for a few weeks while the job starts. I am going to be doing the Onsite Geo role for the initial part of the project, overseeing the single coil operations. Brian will be swapping out with me after the two week period which is when the towed array portion of the project will recommence.

It has been drawn to my attention (you know who you are), that I have not put up the piccies of my Apartment! I plan to take some today once I have cleaned up. I also plan to post my Seattle pictures so keep an eye on the Gallery.

After returning home to change and receiving some additional training, it was off to Maryland to conduct the survey. It took into the late night (or early next morning) to get where we needed to be for that day. We returned on Tuesday to finish up and so some surveying. After it was all done, it was back to Hershey for a 9PM arrival.

Wednesday I was out in Lancaster doing an EM-31 survey. I have not used one of these since Uni and it was good (in a strange, messed up way) to see the beast again. This time though, it was not me with a handheld GPS and a notebook writing down each stations information, but we had a data logger which did all that for me. Wish I had one of those 3 years ago!

Today (Thursday) and Friday I will be in Denver, Colorado. It is a bit of a change of pace as I am not doing field work but more administrative stuff. The view on the flight in was spectacular. The contrast in the snow covered fields was fantastic. The detail with the shadows was great.

Last night I won an English writing competition which was run by Oxford University. Yes yes, it was a dream but it was fun. For the prize, we all went out and had lobster tails (No, I was not drinking before I went to bed ). The prize was for a piece about “how do you say hello and why?” I have sort of been thinking about it since and saying hello does reveal a lot about a person. Sometimes you get those fake, manufactured hello’s which need a good dusting off but other times you feel it has more depth to it.

Anyway, next week in diversity I am off to Virginia for three days for a TM-6 mag / Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) job. Should be fun.

The work week is now over and the weekend begins. A few things have happened this week to make things interesting. Today I put down the initial deposit on a place of my own to rent. It is close to work (around 2 miles!) and is in a nice area. I am planning to sign the lease on and start the move in process on Tuesday!

Ian left for Australia today. He is going back for around a month to get his Visa sorted out. I also learnt today that in order to obtain a drivers licence in PA, I have to get a learners permit. So I will have to go and do the written test to obtain that and then a few days later I will try for my real licence – what a pain in the bum!

My social security number still hasn’t arrived (not that it should have come by now) so I still don’t have a bank or anything yet so hopefully it comes next week!

It looks like I will have at least one day in the field next week using the TM-6 to look for drums about 2 hours away from here.

Anyways, thats it for now, cu!

 The Wedding was beautiful and I am really glad that I was able to get the time off to see it.

My flight out is on Tuesday @ 6AM (i will have to get up early!). My flight details are as follows:

Virgin DJ361 Hobart – Melbourne
Qantas QF93 Melbourne  – Los Angeles
American Airlines AA144 Los Angeles – Washington (Dulles)
United Airlines UA7209 Washington – Harrisburg

Thats it for now Catch u on the flipside

After checking out and walking to Swanston St to catch the No16 tram, I arrived 1 hour and 45 minutes early at the consulate…ooops..

After grabbing some brekky and trying to kill time, I ended up going in around 9:45am (my appointment was @ 11)… After being told “geez mate, your early.. did you fly in from interstate or something?”, I went through security and started playing the waiting game.

After sitting for a while and watching the fabulous 5 minute looping video about entering the US, I was called to submit my forms and supporting documentation. Once that was done it was time to return to the waiting game.

After a while, I was called up to the second window where I was asked around 2-3 questions, he said it all looks good, you have the qualifications etc he said it will be in the mail in around 4-5 days The relief was fantastic

That afternoon i was walking around Melbourne and I came across a flight center. I intended to go in and just ask about prices etc and some of the first prices he came up with were what I expected. After I enquired about “how about the prices into Baltimore/Washington [BWI])”, he came up with a Qantas / AA combination for a killer price. I walked out for a 1 year return ticket to BWI for $1754 (all taxes inc) leaving on Feb 28th. There are change fees on this ticket so I booked it as far into the future as possible with the intention of setting a date later.

Anyways, thats it for now, Tata!

January

January saw me return to work after a nice 3 week vacation over the Christmas / New Years period. I spent a few weeks in Brisbane before I headed out to Western Australia for my 3rd Minex Stint. I enjoyed Minex once I got used to walking 20km a day. The lifestyle was good and there was always spare time in the afternoons to help devour a carton of beer.

February 

February saw continuing work in Western Australia. It was during this time that I informed G-tek about the job offer I recieved from ARM Group in Hershey, PA. I put in my notice and started preparing myself for relocation to the United States. I remember our last trip into Kalgoorlie and the fun we had drinking too much at the Exchange Hotel.

March

March saw me ‘Unresign’ from my position at G-tek. The Visa H1-B Visa I had applied for was unavailable as the cap of applicants had been reached leaving me unable to be employed by ARM Group. After being reaccepted into G-tek, it was arranged that I would still go over to the US but be contracted out through G-tek to ARM Group until the Visa could be properly sorted out. My first project in the US was a handheld evaluation program at Aberdeen Test Center in Maryland. I was trained by Steve on the Minelab F3 and I left for the US on March 30 with Terry (an old hand at the F3). Before leaving I packed up my stuff from my Aunt Geni’s place (when I say pack, I mean i boxed some stuff up and it is still there today waiting for me) and headed back to Tasmania for a quick visit to see my friends and family before my trip away.

April 

After safely arriving in the US, I spent a few days in Hershey where I got over my jet lag (which was not too bad as I slept a lot on the plane [thanks mum]) and to do some further training with the ARM Staff. Once the training was complete, Alex, Brian, Terry and I headed down to Aberdeen for the loving dubbed ‘Minelab Project’. We spent 3 weeks in the field Calibrating, Recording and Locating targets at the Test Center. It was a fun project and I am hoping to get back to Aberdeen next year for another project dealing with some new positioning systems.

May 

May was the month of Air-Testing and the EM-61. The air testing was conducted during the first week at the newly built ARM Air Testing tower. This is where we sat our instrument up on a platform and placed ordnance items below the sensor at varying depths and orientations. It was a tedious but interesting task. In early to mid May, I drove to Massachusetts (YES!, I can still spell it ) to work on an ordnance cleanup site for Jeff Baird’s Company, RRR. The site was pretty to look at but hard to work on. There was tree cover and hills which made the task of choosing a positioning system difficult as the preferred method of GPS was out of the question. We tried a new positioning system which sounded good in theory but did not deliver what we were looking for. Being in Massachusetts (Spelt it right again!) I wanted to see Boston. I went on one of the Tourist Tram ride things which was great and I found the Cheers Bar which was even better.

June 

I spent the first week of June continuing the work at Devens. I left the site to get ready for a Job at the Langley Air Force base in Virginia. Our task was to do a mag survey over 2 golf courses. We spent 3 weeks down there working long hours to get the job done. We were running out of people and the call went out to Australia where Kev sent Ian over to help with the mess. It was also around this time when Kev announced that he had tendered his resignation and was leaving G-tek. I did get myself a gadget in June, my Garmin 60CS GPS arrived from Amazon.com.

July 

Early July saw us wrap up the DA and processing for the Langley Job. It was a nice one to have behind us. July turned out to be a fairly quiet month work wise. There was no real amount of fieldwork and my billable hours were way down. I did attend a conference down in Maryland which was centered around Technology Transfer. It was where people could show what new technologies had been developed and how they could be applied.

August

August was a little slow at the start as well. During the second week I went back to Massachusetts to work on another job with RRR, but this time using the Geometrics Mag. It was a great little project and way to much beer was drunk at the pub across the road from the hotel. Once back from Massachusetts, I helped to complete the processing of a Job which was taking place in Columbus. This project was a bit of a mess but it was completed. We then moved on for prepping ourselves for Lowry. Lowry was meant to take place in May, it was then postponed till June, July then August when the schedule was finally firmed up for the project to take place in September.

August was also the month when G-tek closed its doors. The company was placed into the hands of administrators whom reviewed the situation and decided to wrap things up. There was uncertainty about my position but the administrators kept me on the books well in to September.

September 

September started all smiles with the ARM Golf tournament taking place in the first week along with a visit to the Pennsylvania Ren Faire. Lowry processing started and it was a little frustrating as all the data that was coming in had as many data gaps as swiss cheese. This held up our end pretty badly but was the weeks went on, the gaps reduced and we were able to push on. There is a lot I could say about Lowry but I don’t want to do it here as I have been surprised in the past about who reads my blog.

October 

October was a month of long hours and more frustration. Lowry was continuing and the data was pouring in. October did mark the time though when Ellen opened her beauty room “Sotto” down in Margate. October also saw the arrival of my second gadget purchase from Amazon – my Panasonic GS35 Video Camera!

November 

November was more of the same. Lowry was still going on and data was still coming in. I did have my first thanksgiving dinner which was nice. I can still remember the enormous lines at the stores in the Black Friday sales. Winter was also starting to approach and towards the end of the month we got our first dusting of snow for the season. I also found out in November about Andrew and Kate’s wedding plans.

December 

I mentioned in November how we got a dusting of snow, well in December, we got the mother load. I remember spinning the wheels all the way to work the day after as the snow ploughs battled to move the large amounts of snow from the roads. Lowry was still going until the 21st where DA was officially shut down for the holiday season. I got myself a less geeky gadget from Amazon in December, my Mountain Bike. It arrived the day before the large snow fall so it took a good week before I could ride it properly.

Well, that was my year. It has had its share of ups and downs but overall it was a good year I hope 2006 is a great year for everyone. I am counting down until February when I will be back down under for the Wedding of the Year

 It looks live everything is going to work out ok. I have put in my extension for my current B1 Visa. My paperwork for my E-3 is pretty much done and all I need to do is arrange an appointment for Feburary sometime. So it still looks like I will make it for the wedding which is great!

——————–

I got an email today about my E-3 Working Visa. It looks like the Lawyer botched the application. Here is an extract from the email:

Seems Chris must return to Australia to obtain an E-3. The lawyer has completed all the paperwork which Chris has an original so that part of the process is complete. Chris has to finish the process himself. Now, after he obtains an E-3, we can file the extensions here in the US and he would not have to return to Australia.

My current B1 Temporary working visa expires in around a week which means I will either

1. Have to return to Australia when that expires
2. Lodge Another extension which will max out the time I can stay on the B1 Visa

Hopefully I can find out what I am doing on Monday. I have already extended my B1 once and I am not sure if they will let me extend again…