Switching over to Nights

As part of the continuing diary of the offshore engineer for the last 2 week hitch for a while the first day and night offshore are always the most difficult. Usually bacause you are trying to turn your world upside down. Once you have arrived you then have 3 or four hours to try to get a little sleep. Anyone who has ever slept for this length of time will know that you generally wake up feeling more tired than when you went to sleep. This is something to do with your body going into a transition sleep between light sleep and deep Rem sleep. You are not in your deepest sleep so therefore don't recharge properly but you go far enough into it to allow waking up to be painful. When the alarm does get you up you stumble around for a couple of hours then find the lightswitch and get out on shift. Your back to back explains the state of play and gives you the tour. The night passes without too much hasstle a few glitches but nothing too tough. And by 6am all you crave is bed. Afetr knocking off your force yourself to eat a little breakfast and then head for Zed's. The first 3 hours is exhaustion sleep, then a bathroom break, then another hour snoozing and then another bathroom break. by 12 noon your body is already trying to get you up. You again have a sleep where you never quite get into that deep zone and are still tired. I decided to waste some time in the gym at this point. Tramping down the staris into the bowels of the rig passing watertight doors, the only indication that this floating drilling rig is a ship when it isn't jacked up on the sea bed drilling an oil well with the lettering stencilled onto the door"must remain closed while at sea". 30 mins cycling(it could have been longer the bike wanted me to do an hour) then 30mins on the X-Trainer followed by 15mins on the treadmill. it would have been longer but some idiot came in and without asking put the telly on and then the stereo. full volume dance over my Ipods Jimmy Hendrix just got me upset and I went for a strech and a shower. By this time it was almost 3:30 and a cup of tea and a read took me through to dinner at 5. Afetr the ops meeting at 5:45 I cornered the STC(Safety Training Coach)and got some training material for the evening and met Robbie in the boot room for a brief handover. Right now I feel very tired. It will pass and I will have 40winks in front of the TV later if nothing is going on. Trying to phone home has become a little frustrating too, the call dials out but there seems to be a jam at the BP exchange and won't dial past that. Tired and frustrated while tring to turn my world onto its head. The rig rumbles away in the background not really giving a toss about my frustration or the frustration of the others on board. Just a large hollow meccano set wired for sound and sparks to keep everything running. A huge diesel engine at its core running day and night burning up the refined version of the stuff being pumped out of the ground all around us. People, fuel, electricity, air, hydraulic oil and water being pumped around its arteries by motivation, pumps, turbines, and compressors. At its brain a radio room receiving instructions from town.....little do they know that each part makes a little decision of its own.