Get that Asia

Heyyyy guys. So I'll be on a plane in about 30 hours. That plane will take me to South Korea. Say whaaaat? Yeah, I haven't written anything on this blog for a while, but I got a job offer in Korea in the city of Jinju. 
Here's a map of South Korea - that's Jinju on the south side - about a half hour from the beach. Niiiice. So that's where I'll be for the next year.
And man oh man, it doesn't even seem like I'll be gone for that long. None of this has really sunk in yet. Buut it's gonna happen pretty soon. All I have to do is pack and then it's time to go. Woof. But I am pretty excited about going - new places, new faces, new jarb - all good things.
Since my last post I found the job after looking for about three weeks, then I signed a contract and just recently finally got my visa stamped in my passport. It looks real legit. But ever since signing my contract I've been running all over the place, saying my seeyalaters to friends from Vancouver to Seattle to Bellingham to Vegas. And it's all been awesome.
A lot of people ask about the job and Korea and stuff so Here are some of the details of the job:
I'll be working at a private, after school institution for the next year. Parents pay for their kids to go there throughout the year, where their kids can take extra classes in math, science, English, taekwondo(sp), etc.  All of these schools (including the public schools) prefer that their English teachers are native speakers such as myself. They hire us by the truck loads. So many over there. Literally all you have to do is have a four year degree and be from an English speaking country.
It took me a solid three months to get all my documents and whatnot together for this job - FBI background report, notarized degree. But now it's time and I'm ready to dust off that passport and get some staaamps out East.
Other deets: I'll be teaching kids from age 8-16. My hours are 1:30 - 10:00PM. A little on the long side, but still a decent deal. I think I'll teach six classes a day. We get weekends off, ten vacation days per year, and we get national holidays off too.
No Korean in the class! Dat's right - no sprekenzi that Korean in this class bc I, your teacher, do not speak any of it.
Everybody asks me, "do you speak Korean?" No. No, I do not. "How does that work?" Well, a lot of people speak English over there and schools are fine with the fact that you don't speak it - gets the kids immersed in the English.
Others ask, "why do you want to do that? Why would you want to teach in Korea?"
Why the ef would I not want to teach in Korea?
But really, Korea provides more money and benefits for foreign teachers than any other country in the world. Look it up. No one comes close. I got thems college loans to pay off and Korea allows me to pay those off AND travel the world at the same time.
Benefits: I get my round trip airfare paid for by the school, free apartment, 50% paid insurance, pension (Korean 401k), severance pay of one month at the end of the contract, and a decent salary of 2.1 million Korean won / month. I'm a millionaire. That comes out to about $1900 per month. Not much, but it's crazy cheap to live like a king out there.
And I get to live and work in Korea for a year, which is pretty cool. 

The city I'm going to live in seems pretty cool. Population: 300,000. Weather: just like the PNW, minus the incessant amount of rain. Spring is on the way and I'm pretty excited about that. Soon they'll have their annual lantern festival, which looks unreal. google that ish. There is a good amount of other foreign teachers there, so I'm expecting to meet a lot of English speakers/new amigos as soon as I get over there. I've read that the city is really clean too, so it's the opposite of my last apartment's location - Las Vegas. Sick nasty. Other than that, I have no idea of what I should expect of my new city.
 Crazy that this is happening. And I mean, I've been planning on doing this for a while and I've been waiting for months now, but all that time has really been flying by. Usually when I spend an extended amount of time back here in Vancouver I  am pretty ready to gtfo, but this time around it's been awesome, seeing friends pretty often, traveling up to Seattle, spending time with the fam - again, all good.

Side note: I'm excited to finally use my degree. Every single job I've had since graduating in 2011 has required just about zero education. Now things are changing, lookin up!

That's about all I have for now. I'll write again soon...from Koreeeea
And if I didn't get to say see you later, then, well, I'll see you later, I'll probably miss you, and don't worry, I'll be back in a year, which isn't that long. They go by pretty fast.

The End of ND

I am officially done with the rigs. I put in my time, I made my money, and now in three hours I'll be on a train bound for Vancouver, WA.
I've really been done with the rigs for a couple weeks now. My last day was on New Years. These last couple weeks I've been seeing a lot of family and besides that pretty much all I did was manage to sell my piece of garbage car for a whopping $250. She was old, lots of body damage, lots of leaks - not worth fixing and not really worth anything in general.
So now I'm packed up. I came here with two bags, now I'm leaving with four. Simplicity.
The next steps include finishing all my paperwork for Korea, seeing friends in the PNW, and find some temporary work.
I guess that's a really brief summary of what's been happening lately. As for the last three months...
I worked on a really great crew for my last few months in the Bakken oilfields. For the most part we all got along really well, nobody got hurt, etc. But after a while I kept hearing stories of guys who would get hurt or even die on other rigs and thought that if anything like that ever happened to me then I'd live with a whole lot of regret, knowing that I came out here for nothing but some coin and ended up disabled or what have you. Aaaand I just was not up for that. So now I'm leaving with all limbs, fingers, etc. and some money in my pocket too, which is great.
But I don't regret coming out here for a second. I paid off a lot of debt, as intended - about 15% of my college education. Not bad. Also I got to do something that a lot of people never will - I got to work in a very unique work setting, unlike any other setting I've ever worked in or ever will. The rigs really are something else. Working there is different not only because of the danger, the weird hours, the muddiness, the heavy machinery, but also because it's a place where, for the most part, you can really be yourself. You can say almost anything you want and there are no consequences for it (again, almost anything). You can goof around, joke a lot with the guys you work with, swear all the time, talk about the gnarstiest topics of covo, and pee almost ANYWHERE and not get charged for public indecency. Phenomenal.
And I can say that I've worked with a very diverse crowd too. For a lot of them, they're working here for a reason - nowhere else they're going to find a job that pays this much. A lot of them have a whole ton of kids to support ( I me three guys who were paying $2000/mo in child support. woof.) and really wouldn't be able to do so elsewhere - the money's so geewd out here. And that was all great, but like I mentioned before, at what price? I'm glad I got out of it when I did. Now maybe I can actually use my degree after having it for almost two years now.
And yes, I could have stuck it out here longer and saved more money, paid off more debt but I figured, well, I really have about zero responsibilites so it really won't kill me financially to leave this place. I'll find something better elsewhere. Time to do something I liiiike.
But things did end well with the company. I was told that if I ever wanted to come back then I'd be welcome. Always a good thing. But here's hoping I'll be rolling in the cash elsewhere.
Back to my thoughts on working out here - I now have a lot more knowledge on tools...and drilling (which I might not use in the future)... but the biggest thing is knowing that I can work a lot. and under shitty conditions (thirty below zero temps with wind chill, getting covered in mud, standing on swollen angles for a whole week). So after all this I know that I can endure a whole lot of work and pain and exhaustion and come out of it just fine. So bring on more work. If I can stick it out on the oil rigs in ND then I can stick it out just about anywhere. Amiriiiight?
Man, I'm glad I didn't end up doing this forever. Before I left my dad would say, "you never know what you'll end up doing. Like your mom, she wasn't that excited to start her first job out here and she ended up doing it for years!" (paraphrasing), saying that I might end up doing this for a very long time. Like I said, it's good to be out. There's quite a culture out here that is not too desirable - you might not want to surround yourself with and maybe end up like a lot of these roughnecks - divorced multiple times, supporting endless amounts of kids, smoking til they cough up a lung (on the daily), chewing tobacco (I tried it a couple times, puked, and I was done), hating their jobs - stuff. like. that. And really, the job just wasn't for me. I showed up on time every day, I did what I was told, had a good attitude, but wasn't the best at it. And that's something that I am looking forward to - not only finding a job that I enjoy, but also something that I'm good at. The whole thing was a good experience, but not for a lifetime.
I think that sums up most of my thoughts on the six months out there. If I see you in person, I'll most definitely have more stories. I'd share them online, but I'd rather be there with you and laugh while I told them.
Here's to the next couple months of uncertainty.

Real Quiet

Things are real quiet around here. I'm back in GF for the week. Today's Friday, I'll leave for Tioga on Monday. I've been well rested and loving it - I felt like garbage this last week off.
Work was great though. I worked the day shift and it was a total piece of cake. We drilled about 6,000 feet into ze ground in 7 days. yaaaaa. Great success since the bit that does the drilling at the end of the pipe had zero problems. Hence all we did was drill. What usually happens is that that bit has some kind of problem, which means that we have to take all that pipe out of the ground (called tripping out), rack it back in the derrick (tower), take off the bit, put a new one on, and then put all that pipe back into ze ground (called tripping in). So if we would have had to trip that pipe in and out, it would have taken a while since the whole time we had anywhere from 12,000 to 18,000 feet of pipe in the ground. Dahs a lotta pipe.
So when we weren't making connections (about every half hour) we were just cleaning stuff around the rig. Make money make money. Such an easy week. Really the only rough thing about the job right now has been the weather. 
Oh, and last night in the World Series there was a stolen base, which means that everybody gets a free doritos locos taco. I have 13 minutes to redeem mine. I advise you do the same. Laterrrr

Week Off

So I just finished my first one week off. Being used to the two week off schedule, that went by pretty freaking fast. I spent it all here in Grand Forks and it's hard to even figure out where that time went, what I even did.
For the most part I just tried to get caught up on sleep, which really didn't happen until night #4 or 5, when I took some NyQuil and slept for SIXTEEN HOURS. Woof. Now I'm rested.
Besides that I got real prepared for the winter. My aunt works at a local store - Home of Economy, where they sell all kinds of industrial workers' goods. I dropped $800 there in one day - new insulated steel toed boots, fire-retardant pants and jacket, gloves, hats, underarmor - that ish is expensive. Buuuut when it comes to winter safety / the avoidance of frostbite, money isn't really on your mind. After that I did my four months' worth of car cleaning and laundry that I had neglected while I was back home in Vancouver for my days off. Narsty. The seats in my beautiful Buick are finally vacuumed out - veddy nice.
Most exciting news: I bought plane tickets to go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas - only $370 round trip from Williston, ND to Portland, OR. What a steal. Sooo I'll be home Tuesday, Nov 20, landing at 9:00PM. Time to smaaaang. Then I think I'm back home Dec. 18, leaving for work on Christmas Eve. Very excite.
I also got to see family galore this week as my cousin Kelly just had a baby and errbody and their mom came into town for the baby shower. I saw cousins, cousins' kids, aunts, uncles, grandparents. Good times.
Also, I ate like a king. My Gma cooks like none other and cooks every night. I haven't eaten like this in months, maybe years.
But that's about it - the week went by real quick-like and tomorrow I'm headed back west to Tioga for another 7 day stint. Update to come in a week. Dooooses.

Very Abnormal

Things be changing. Today is October 12th. Whaaa? As of now I've been working one rigs for four months.
Things that have changed: 
1 - the rig I work on. Two weeks I got a call from my driller who told me that our rig was getting stacked out (shut down). Poop news, as I really liked our crew and liked work. Buuut he told me that we all still had jobs and that we'd be sent out to different rigs. I was sent to a rig just outside of Crosby, North Dakota. It was a little different from the original rig I was assigned to, but overall it's the same kind of setup so I got used to it pretty quick. We had a great crew of seven guys (one more than your usual, full crew) and work was really easy as we had to drill real slow-like that week. Not only was our crew great, but our camp we stayed at was brand new - ten times better than the living accommodations that I was used to.
Buut that all changed after one week. On my seventh day on my second rig my tool pusher (rig manager) told me that I would be working on another rig. After work, I'd have 24 hours off work to pack up, leave camp, and drive to the new rig and man camp. Woof. I wasn't too happy about it. The biggest thing that I wasn't too happy about was that my schedule was changed. That brings us to number 2.
2 - My work rotation. So far this year I've been working two week rotations: working for 14 days and then getting 14 days off. That is no longer the case. On my new rig I am working 7 days on, 7 days off. There ups and downs to it.
Ups: I only work out in the freezing cold 7 days in a row rather than 14 days in a row. Also, I'm working with the most fun crew of all time. There are 5 of us: me, our floorhand, motorhand, derrickhand, and driller. Our floorhand and motorhand are brothers, 14 years apart but they are two of the funniest guys that I have ever worked with. We joke around a whole lot out on the rig - and it gets real gay real fast. Haha. Our motorhand like to use the drill pipe as a strip pole, dance on it, maybe sing a song while he's at it. Couldn't ask for much more. This last week of work was probably the most fun I've .had at work in a long time. Another plus: mo money. Each day we work on this particular rig we get a bonus of $25, so basically a $2 hourly raise due to the fact that we are using this material in our mud called invert. It's nasty. Invert can be a little irritating on the skin but ya know, it's worth the money. I like money, I want more of it.
Downs: I can hardly ever go home. With such a small amount of time, it's hard to make the 2500 mile round trip. Right now I'm looking into flights back to PDX and if prices are right, I think I'll be back home for Thanksgiving and right before Christmas. So that's a bummer but I've decided to stick with the schedule because I love my crew and I really don't know if my body could handle 14 days at a time in the North Dakota winter. And I really want to stick out this winter, 1) because I
want to say that I actually did it and survived the insane temps, 2) I want the money for longer than just these four months I've put in... I guess that's it. If I could find another job that paid just as well and was in a real warm, indoors environment then yeah, I would take it in a heartbeat but until then I'll be sticking it out with the company that I'm working with right now. Gotta do what cha gotta dooo.
3 - My residence on days off. I plan on crashing with my family on days off because they love having me and there's no rent involved. Livin' real cheap-like. So send me mail! I love getting it.
Nick Steffl
1015 18th Ave S
Grand Forks, ND 58201

Here's a segment I like to call work terms. If I ever use them in the future, you can look at this and know what I'm talking about.

Work terms:
Roughneck: A worker on a rig . i.e. me.
Man camp: Where a company puts up their workers, whether it's a huge facility or a trailer. I getadatrailer :P))
Tool pusher: Your rig manager. He da boss. Ours is pretty cool.
Stack/BOP: This protects our lives if we ever get a kick.
Kick: a bunch of gas coming up from the well, which could lead to an explosion.
Well: That hole in the ground that we're drilling
Kick rocks: What you're told if you get fired. As in, "kick rocks down the road as you walk away from this place where you used to work."
Put out: Give it a lot of effort / swing real hard.
To get run off: To get fired.
To get stacked out: To have your well shut down, due to problems with the well, the company that your company is hired by, or whatever. Lately a lot of rigs have been stacked out and some guys have even been laid off.
Worm: Somebody who has just started. Also called squirrel, noob, whatever. That's me. You can identify a worm by the color of their hardhat. It's green. Once you're promoted you get a white hardhat. Hopefully I'll have one of those white ones within a couple months. That would be a promotion. I want it.


 I'm living a very abnormal life right now. That's what I can say for now. I work long hours for multiple days in a row and then have a good amount of time on my hands when I'm off work. But I'm not back home, I'm in my birthplace of Grand Forks, North Dakota. It's not too shabby though. It's quiet and should allow me to get some side projects and whatnot done while I'm out here. Aaaand I get to see a lot of my extended family, which is pretty great. Growing up I'd rarely get to see them all but now here I am on a somewhat regular basis, seeing everybody when I'm off work.
Side project/goal lined up for now: getting certified to teach English as a second language. Yes, yes. I just bought the groupon deal today and I'm going to destroy that certification within a few months from now and then I think I'll head over to Korea, teach some English and move on to the next thing.
Here's my tentative plan: work this gig til next summer, maybe throughout the summer, maybe go back to Alaska for a summer, go teach for a year, and then hopefully land a job with the Dept of State with the consulate and continue to work abroad. That would be siiiick. They like sociology majors. Whaaaat?
Anyways, that's the update for now, and they should be coming a little more frequently with my new work schedule. I'm off to go bring in my Buick baby for a tuneup. Send me mail!
- Nicholas J Steffl

8 month catch up

Sooo it's been a long time, but let's try to give an overview of the year 2012.

I was so poor. I had spent well over two month in Las Vegas as an unemployed poker fiend. Yes, I had won some money, but it was nothing substantial that would support me in the long run. I needed a job. Oont I eventually found one. The company I had worked for the previous summer hired me back onto their Payroll as I took the job as the training program administrator of Las Vegas. It was an alright gig. It was pretty easy work and most importantly, it allowed me to stay in the Mecca of poker. But the charm of the city of sin and a new gig wore out real quick.
I was trained for the job all over - first in Seattle and then Provo one week later.
February rolled around and I was finally back in Vegas and was on the hunt for my first apartment. I was looking for something cheap and short term - he job would only last for three months. My roommate Nisa and I found a roach-infested dump of a place and moved in five days after my arrival into Vegas. We lived about a mile east of the center strip, which was good for poker life, but made for an all-around gross living space. Vegas is a disgusting city. Aside from the strip and downtown and all it's casinos, it's a terrible Place - different from what you'd expect - its plagued by poverty, which you could see on every city block. I stopped giving spare change after bein asked every day when we lived at the hostel cat. No más compasión, sadly.
After one month on the job I was ready to GTFO. There were no places to meet other young people so things got pretty boring. Nisa and I would hang out with a couple of our friends from the hostel cat and go to a few parties with them but m god, the people we did meet at these parties were justinsane e - they lived to party and to, well, party some more. It was just a weird environment to live in.
And like I said, work got old - it wasn't challenging, the pay sucked, and I hardly ever got to work with other people as a team. Lame. So by the time April rolled Around I was ready to head out to the Bakken oilfields of North Dakota. Why, you ask? Well, my u clemhad a connection and could get me a job once I got ou there. And get out there I did. After finishing the Vegas gig I spent a week
Back home and then hopped On a train for ND.
Once I got there I stayed with family for about four weeks while the company cleared my paperwork, drug test, physical exam, etc.
Then I finally started work. My first day was on June 12, 2012. It was quite the start. I got a call from my rig manager, got directions, and. Cruised north, finding the rig about 30 miles south of the Canadian border. I arrived unprepared. It turned out that the boots I purchased weeks
Prior were a little too small for me. It showed by my fourth day. My ankles
Swelled up like crazy - an amount of swelling that I didn't really know was possible. It was rough. But I made it through the week and learned a whole lot while I was a it. The Pguys on my crew were pretty cool about it too, they had mercy on me and didn't work me too hard, knowin that hey didn't want to lose another guy from the rig, which is a bit of a common occuranc on our rig. In the past four months three guys have quit. Woof. By now were back to the usual 6 guys on a crew - thank god. It makes work a bit more manageable.
But anyways, now it's August and I'm back on the train, about to start my fourth hitch out there. Overall, it's been way easier than expected. The only thing that would keep me from holdin onto this job would be the winter. The summers been fine - great weather, pretty much zero rain. Perfect. So well see how long I hold onto the job. I'd like to keep it for a solid year at least.
The last thing to address: a lot of people ask, so what do you do out there? Well, lots of stuff. It's basically whatever the other guys on the crew told me to do. Solo I pressure wash and scrub the rig and make it look all nice and shiny or I help make drilling pipe connections or I help maintain equipment. You know, shtuff like that.
When I'm not working out there I'm back home in Vancouver, USA spending time with my friends and fam. It's been awesome.
So there you have it - an update of Steffl adventures, 2012 edition. Yes, many details and events hav been left ou, but maybe I'll write more. Maybe in a cOuple weeks, mayb 8 more months from now. Life's been great - problem free, baybeeee.

"si pudiera vivir mi vida nuevamente ... Tendría más problemas reales y menos imaginarios."

It's December?

So here I am. Still in the Vegas. Boy oh boy has it been some time since i last wrote. i think you could say that a lot happened in the last five weeks. however, we're gonna keep it short. i'm a busy freelance poker player so you know... things are busy. poker has treated me very well recently. the month of november was very good. and now december is here. but before we get to those details of all that has happened here, i'm sad to say that hardman is no longer here in vegas. he peaced out to denver weeks ago. it's a bummer to not have him around, but man oh man, we had a good time here at the hostel cat. now he's watching his niece in denver, hangin with the fam, you know.
vegas has been fun. the partying definitely slows down and you no longer feel the need to meet people when they are just passing throuh, unless you all go out together for good times.
highlights this past month:    again, this is quick and dirty
-halloween parade down to freemont. wasn't that great but drinks made the night quite interesting. ended up dancing at a video arcade / club. blast. ask hardman for deets.
-limo tour down the strip
-going home for thanksgiving. so good. friends and the fam. so good.
-beer pong
-disappointing nickel beer night
-dashbocker and shliebs visited me and hardman in vegas. great fun. we took down a craps table at binions for $700. it was the first time i ever played craps.
-cirque du soleil. mystere. what a bomb show. expensive, but waaay worth it.

anywhos, that's all for now, folks.
misses and kisses.
oh, and here's a little nugget of  info, requested by mr. duquette, here is my current poker standing:
if you were to take my winnings and subract my losings the total is... im up $1,200. booya. doesn't cover all the vegas expenses. but hey, im feeling good about it.
now off to the bellagio. loves