Arms & The Man

Or, how to interview a heavily armed geologist.

This is the first of 2 posts on the joys of interviewing & hiring geologists and engineers.

Recruiting geologists for a project is a tricky business. For all sorts of reasons, someone who comes across well in an interview can be an absolute antisocial nightmare in the field; hygiene issues, weird sexual proclivities (see Geologists Gone Bad), fucked up political or religious opinions, drugs… the list of transgressions is endless, but the end result is always the same; someone sitting alone in a corner of the cook house while everyone else plays cards and throws things at them.

A Yemeni market. Veggies not guns.

I’ve hired nose combers to work in Pakistan, Iran, and Bulgaria. The biggest success was a team of young Bulgarian geologists we hired in the mid-90s for Anglo American’s exploration office in Sofia. The 4 guys we picked have all forged decent careers in the international exploration industry. When we hired them, starting on maybe $250/month -good money in post-communist Bulgaria- they were thrilled to be working for a major mining company that wasn’t owned by a Russian oligarch. Each of the guys had a different skill set to add to our group -prospecting, logistics, drill program supervision and so on; a competent and adaptable project team that we used all over the world.

Yemen

A few years later I was back on the hiring trail again for the same company, this time working with a Turkish colleague, Yasar, to hire a small team of Yemeni geologists from the university in the capital city, Sana’a.

Continue reading “Arms & The Man”

Rude Words & Geology

I was back home in Brexit land in October and again in November. In between moping on the forecourts of sucked-dry gas stations, getting rained on in Wales, and being depressed in downtrodden Stoke on Trent, I had plenty of time to ponder the curious world of British place names (as you do).

So many jokes so little time

The UK is full of wonderfully rude place names; there are so many that one intrepid individual, Paul Taylor, recently embarked on a comprehensive tour of the smuttiest ones perched on a rather dodgy looking 50cc moped.

Bell End. It’s real.

Mr. Taylor started in Shitterton and ended up -fittingly- in the pleasant hamlet of Bell End. Along the way he stopped in The Knob in King’s Sutton, Butthole Lane in Shepshed, Titty Ho, Cockermouth, and Minge Lane. Genius. I’ve been to Cockermouth, and yes, I admit I sniggered as we drove into the village past the name sign.

The disciplines of geology and mining are not without their double entendres, but remember, at best mining people are a beer-swilling puerile bunch not widely known for their intelligent, penetrating humour. True, there are plenty of words that will raise a chuckle from them, but it’s stuff that would make most normal people stare at each other in baffled incomprehension.

Continue reading “Rude Words & Geology”

Drillholes, Magma & Megawatts

I bloody love Iceland

It’s full of rocks and puffins and volcanoes and ponies and geysers and more volcanoes and stuff. And it’s a geologist’s wet dream, although I don’t count sedimentologists as real geologists so you lot can stop nodding in agreement.

What right-minded nose comber can resist active volcanoes and recent lava flows still warm under foot? The Fagradalsfjall volcano, which has been erupting for a while now, haunts my erotic dreams at night – orange, fiery, sinuous rivers of lovely lava filmed in pornographic close-up slo-mo by kamakazi drones.

Oh yeah baby…
Continue reading “Drillholes, Magma & Megawatts”

Scary Creatures

ooer…

One of the joys of a career in geology is the opportunity it affords humble earth scientists to get closer to nature, David Attenborough style. Sometimes a bit too close. Here are a few stories on the nastier strains of wildlife that I’ve encountered myself, or stories that friends have told me. I’ve covered some already –tortoises, ostriches, polar bears etc.– so they won’t be rehashed here.

This list is NOT a top ten and it’s not arranged by level of threat or ability to cause painful death or injury. It’s simply a list of stuff that occurred to me after my mother-in-law (thanks Maureen) planted the idea for the post. If you have your own story, let me know via the comments.

Hairy Insect Things With Lots of Legs

Best avoided.

In the field, anything with lots of hair, a bulbous pink abdomen and more than 4 legs should be studiously avoided, which is why I’d never vote for Boris Johnson.

If you ask me, the single worst insect nightmare is the camel spider, not actually a spider and not really a scorpion either. I touched on them in an earlier blog post. Giant sandy coloured fuckers with huge jaws, they lurk all over Africa and the Middle East, lying in wait to scare the shit out of arachnophobic people like me.

Continue reading “Scary Creatures”

Expansionist Tripe

Social media is full of idiots. Doesn’t matter what topic you’re following -astronomy, koala bears, aliens or cross-dressing nuns – someone has a stupid fringe opinion that they’re going to try to ram down your throat.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IMG_8892.jpg
I’m a intellectual, innit?

In a moment of rashness a few years back, I joined some Facebook geology groups. Learning Geology Community (53k members), Geology and Geologists (123k members), and Fossils Rocks & Minerals (27k members). I wanted to spread the word to all those lucky people about my blog (ha, ha, good plan), and maybe mentor a few newbie geologists. Thanks for the help Uncle Ralph!

It didn’t take long before I was filtering out posts from lazy students trying to get their homework done for free, and lots of “please tell me what is value?” posts with fuzzy photos of grubby little grey chunks they found in a field and think is a meteorite and not a grubby little grey chunk.

And I wasn’t the only one hoping to educate the masses. Pseudoscience posts soon started appearing in my feed; so-called geologists lurking on the dodgy fringes of our fair science, pushing an alternate version of geological reality. Flat-earthers, creationists, climate change deniers- it’s a long list- but one flavour pops up far too often for my liking.

Continue reading “Expansionist Tripe”

The Heart of The Matter

Adventures with A Fib

It’s been a few months since I published anything on my motley blog. I’ve been distracted by on going health issues that bullied their way into the tranquility of the Urbancrows e-rookery.

Almost one year ago, I walked into my doctor’s surgery with a sinus infection and came out with a heart problem. It was a Friday toward the end of October, and I was definitely not a happy camper. I was sweating. My skin was an attractive shade of corpse grey, and I was breathing hard -all of which I put down to the rivers of goop coming out of my sinuses, wending their merry way to my lungs.

Cough please.

My doctor, who’s Russian, was listening to my chest to see if the sinus infection had spread to my lungs. She took a listen with the stethoscope, then listened again all the while looking more and more worried. The cold end of the stethoscope was moving rapidly across my back as I breathed in an out, accompanied by the ominous sound of anxious tutting. Bloody hell, I thought, my lungs must be bad -my head flooded with images of a murky swamp full of mucus and bacteria.  She sat up, took a long look at my pallid, sweaty face and muttered:

“Listen to me carefully. You must go to hospital right now.”

The sinus infection was obviously worse than I thought.

“Isn’t hospital a bit drastic? Can’t you just give me some antibiotics? Last time I had an infection you gave me Amoxicillin.” I said, coughing and hacking and sweating a bit more for good measure.

Continue reading “The Heart of The Matter”

The Cherry Orchard

Every so often, I’ve been privileged to visit a project that is SO woeful that I’ve started to think mid-tour that there must be a hidden upside; something I’ve missed that everyone else can see. This one such story.

Thanks go to my colleague Polar Bear Dave for filling in the blanks and sending me his pictures from the trip.

“A hungry dog believes in nothing but meat.”

Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

Every so often, I’ve been privileged to visit a project that is SO woeful that I’ve started to think mid-tour that there must be a hidden upside; something I’ve missed that everyone else can see. A trip to Morocco years back springs to mind. We were there to visit a VMS project which wasn’t. It was a small, shear zone hosted base-metal occurrence. About 600 stream sediment samples had been collected in a 10x10km concession(!) looking for more “VMS” occurrences; enough geochemistry to spot a discarded AA battery 3 miles upstream, despite the total lack of hydrothermal alteration in the country rock.

“In 20 years I’m going to a crap project in Wenatchee..ha ha ha ha etc.”

I mentioned another travesty in my last post A Few Thoughts About Optimism in Exploration. This one was blind optimism on such a grand scale that I was actually in awe of the guys showing us around. The total lack of common sense was exceeded only by the hopelessness of the project. When it was over, my colleague Dave and I drove back to Vancouver alternately stunned into total silence or engulfed in hysterical laughter at what we’d just witnessed, checking our notes to make sure it was real.

Zombies Ate My Brain!

We’d done an office review of hundreds of zombie juniors on the Venture Exchange; companies with no cash that may have had a stalled project in need of funding. The work flagged a gold project in an old mine near Wenatchee in Washington; the self-proclaimed Apple Capital of the World by the locals, who’ve obviously never been to Kent in southeast England where I grew up.

Wenatchee. It’s the apple capital of Wenatchee.
Continue reading “The Cherry Orchard”

A Few Thoughts On Optimism In Exploration

This slightly sarcastic piece was massively improved by contributions from 4 colleagues: -Brent, Owen, Neil & Mike- all of whom I’ve been lucky enough to know for years. Thanks chaps. You’ll be able to spot where I’ve used your stuff.

Optimist. noun

  1. a person who tends to be hopeful and confident about the future or the success of something. “only an eternal optimist could expect success”

Bananas

A bit like a 99-year-old man with heart failure buying green bananas, exploration geologists are optimists. We have to be. A bad case of pessimism would be a huge impediment to building a geological career that survives past the initial 5-minute interview with the VP Exploration.

A bunch of optimism

“Can I have a job please? I don’t think we’ll ever find anything, but I’ll give it a go if you pay me.”

“WTF? No. No. No. Who let you in? Piss off. I don’t need a depressed hat stand on my team. Please don’t slam the door.”

A wellness website  I picked at random for its daft name, has this to say about optimism. “(it) is a mental attitude characterized by hope and confidence in success and a positive future. Optimists … expect good things to happen….. Optimistic attitudes are linked to a number of benefits, including better coping skills, lower stress levels, better physical health, and higher persistence when pursuing goals.”  To which I’d add “poverty” if your optimism is directed at the junior mining sector, although strictly speaking that’s not really a benefit.

Continue reading “A Few Thoughts On Optimism In Exploration”

My Wartime Roots

My maternal ancestors were ethnic Germans, deported from Czechoslovakia in 1946. This is my mother’s story.

In a departure from the usual mining-related sarcastic drivel, here is a short story about my mother’s dim and distant origins -and hence mine too- which are rooted in one of the key historical events of the 20th Century; the onset of World War 2. Anyone raised in Europe, with parents or grandparents in their 80s who are still alive, has a link to the war because directly or indirectly, it affected everybody on the continent.

The Catholic church in Graslitz where most of my ancestors live today.

I should note that this is a very superficial backward glance at a critical period in European history. I deliberately make no judgements on the horrific events of that period -my aim in writing this down was simply to document the family’s experiences for my 2 sons while I still have access to real memories from the time. To be fair, my mum was very small – only 6 when the war ended and 7 when the family was deported- so the stories are patchy and remembered through the eyes of a child but enriched with details gleaned from her parents and historical archives available on the internet.

Out Of Graslitz / Kraslice

For most of my adult life I’ve been aware that my mother’s roots are German-Czech, and that the family ended up in Germany in 1946 but some of the detail was lacking (for me at least.) She was born in 1939, a tiny hamlet called Silberbach on the outskirts of a small town called Graslitz in the far west of Czechoslovakia, 5km from the German border. Now known as Kraslice, it’s nestled in wooded hills and valleys; the town name may derive from the medieval German word “Graz”, a pine forest, which fits the countryside, but it may also mean small castle. The family were affluent ethnic Germans, with a thriving business making lace and musical instruments.

Continue reading “My Wartime Roots”

Kevin And The Ostrich Of Death.

Full credit to Kevin Broomberg for writing this down, sending it to me, giving me permission to publish it, and putting up with my simplistic edits.

When I grow up I want to be an ostrich.

Here in the urbancrows e-rookery we get a lot of comments about the blog. Granted most are spam bots, or messages from lonely ladies in Russia offering me pictures of themselves au naturale if I just click on a link (which is very nice of them), but every now and then something I write attracts real comments from what I believe are real people. Strangely, I got the most comments after I published the “Field Dump” story, which either 1) tells us something about the human obsession with the act of coiling a rope, or 2) highlights a worryingly low level of maturity in geologists’ humour. Or perhaps both.

To date, I hadn’t received a comment that was compelling enough to make me want to publish it as a full post. They’re mostly short anecdotes, or nice feedback that might add texture to a story, but they lack sufficient detail to make the cut.

That changed the other day thanks to my new mate Kevin Broomberg in South Africa. Kevin’s note pushed all the right buttons for me. He spun me a tale about what happened to him and a few colleagues when they met a rather ornery 8ft tall death chicken. The ripping yarn included dangerous wildlife with nasty big claws, misplaced avian sexual desire, and a remote field camp -how could I not publish it? The only thing missing was zombies (which I wasn’t able to write in to the tale, try as I might.)

Full Patch Death Chickens looking for trouble.

So, with his permission, a few of his photos and a bit of editing, here’s his true story about a randy ostrich that made life very difficult for Kevin and his crew. Full credit to Kevin for this piece. I’ve done some editing but it’s 99% his work. Sadly, he tells me all the photos he had of this poultry incident (sorry) were fried in a shipping container which baked in the sun for 4 weeks during a move from Dar es Salaam to Johannesburg so we’re having to make do with whatever pictures we could find.

Continue reading “Kevin And The Ostrich Of Death.”