Just back from 6 weeks in
Kazakhstan.
I worked there with Western about 13 years ago, so I was quite interested in seeing how the place had changed.I wasn’t disappointed.
Kazakhstan has come a long way. From my earlier time there a dozen years ago, I remember
the markets were little more than half a dozen old women sitting around trying to sell a few wilted vegetables.
Now you can get almost anything you want in modern supermarkets. Even imported wine and spirits, even some I can’t buy here!
The South Koreans now have a big presence in the country (and good luck to them). LG and Samsung products are everywhere.
The crew itself was a bit basic. Better than Western was 12 years back though, possibly better than Western is now!. The people were excellent – it was nice working with people who actually understand what Seismic is about. The recording system was a new one on me. It was a JGI GDAPS4. It’s a bit dated these days and it looks like development work has stopped on it. Pity really, it looks like a system that had potential, if only they had kept working on it.Unfortunately it failed twice, which cost the crew around 10 days lost time. The contractor replaced the system with an IO System 2 after the second failure. This was interesting to me too, as the last time I saw an IO2 was in 2000 I think, in Saudi and it was considered well out of date then. It did a pretty fair job in Kazakhstan though, and in fact for a 2D job I would probably prefer it to IO’s Scorpion or System 4. At least it doesn’t crash 5 times a day! Actually if IO were to purchase JGI, they could learn a lot and it would probably benefit both companies.
For anyone interested, I have some software to analyse GDAPS system tests, and viewers for the GDAPS4 and IO2 systems. Unfortunately IO put no QC information in the shot records (they don’t do much better with the Scorpion either). JGI were a little better, at least they record the box number!.
During the down time, managed a quick trip to Baikonour. I was a bit disappointed there. We couldn’t get to the launch pads or any of the really interesting stuff. Did get to the space museum though, which wasn’t bad, but most of it was models and pictures.There is a Soyuz rocket on display though. Pictures on the Photos page.Baikonour itself was surprisingly run down. I had thought that it would have been a showpiece of modern architecture and living.
Overall I enjoyed my 6 weeks and I hope there is more work for me in
Kazakhstan. It’s an interesting place, with good people and I hope they do well.
Next job is in
Oman, starting early July, up in the north this time.