Sometimes I look out at offshore oil rigs and I’m totes jealous. They get to live way out there, with the waves gently lapping at their gigantic metal support columns. The internet connection is probably bad, so they have to find their own entertainment in the old ways, like playing cards, board games and chasing a hoop with a stick. I can just see oil workers doing every single one of those things.
The latest episode of Echolocation was set above water for once, but it was on an oil rig, where people live and work and play with hoops. This was off the coast of Brisbane, air conditioning being the issue of the day there. They were looking into the logistics of getting an air conditioning specialist to come out to them – loading them into a boat and getting them to come and service the air con, because it was getting to dire levels of ineffectiveness. Like, they’d go to work all day, and it would be work ALL the time because oil rig workers are shift workers, but the conditions would be hot and bothersome, and that causes conflict. And conflict, in such a tight space? Where people are sharing rooms? Things were boiling over. Kelvin was convinced that Drew stole his aftershave, Ulysses was about to snap and start pushing people into the sea if someone dared to leave the seat up one more time, because he’s a germaphobe and he’s deathly afraid of microbes splashing everywhere.
It was chaos. Chaos, I tell you. I think that in the end, they did manage to find an air conditioning repairer. Brisbane companies weren’t all that keen to do it, but one finally agreed to send someone out to the rig, or maybe they went to Brisbane and bought a unit… dang it, I just can’t remember. They moved onto that story at the end of the episode about the family who’d been confined to their houseboat for sixteen years because of a shark with an inter-generational grudge, and I swapped my investment pretty fast.
-Anaira
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