They don't have a clue...

So I'm in the Aberdeen training centre on my annual Super Puma recurrent, and chatting with other pilots around the coffee machine, and the conversation goes thusly;

"Where are you still flying L2s?"
"Gabon, just above the Congo"
"Damn, who did you piss off?"

You don't have a clue mate.  Touring internationally is where it's at, if you don't mind a little adventure.  That North Sea routine just has to wear you down and suck the life out of you.  You drift towards seriously over-complicating everything when you become established long term somewhere relatively cushy.  Boredom perhaps?  I've done the first world bad weather production bases to death.  My opinion; you're far better off chasing challenges than settling into anything resembling a comfortable routine.  It forces you to keep things simple.

I've done the heavy IFR offshore base life and have seen how something relatively simple, and dare I say fun, can somehow become tedious if you have the right personalities around.  I spent eleven years flying out to rigs nearing 200 miles out into the North Atlantic, off Canada's East Coast, where coming back to 1/8th of a mile vis and 100 feet ceilings was pretty common, and sixty to eighty knots quartering headwinds far more de rigueur than any sane person could hope for.  I flew to those Sable Island rigs in venerable ole S61's with no auto-pilots and no de-ice,  all hours of the day and night, flashlights nervously checking the mirrors to see if we were in cloud and picking up ice, not really sure what our options were if we had been, the world outside black as the inside of a cow.  I launched out into the same melee in full on blizzards at night when the roads were closed in fully de-iced Super Pumas, watching ice build on the mirrors and wipers until it broke off, nervously watching the torques to make sure Aerospatiale's engineering teams had done their homework.  I recall returning one night discussing our pathetically slow approach ground speeds with air traffic control when the winds were nearing one hundred knots, and their response brings a smile to my face to this day "Don't worry fellas, there are no other aircraft flying within hundreds of miles of here tonight".  It was fun, but you could watch things getting bogged down with bullshit as new players entered the game.

I run into so many North Sea guys who seriously do not have a clue to what lies beyond their little corner of operations.  "Who did I piss off to get an Africa posting?"  I live for postings in Africa!  Take that North Sea mentality, your two alternates and airline procedures and your massive support network, and just try to apply them to flying in third world locales with monkeys bouncing around the rafters and just see how much actual work you get done.  Black and white doesn't wash here, you have to know how to work with grey.  Shades of grey aplenty.  Questionable work VISAs and government officials whose whims and moods control your very existence, parts that may be weeks getting through customs, bizarre procedures that make the most world weary pilots shake their heads and smile.  This here is the show.  I've done the dedicated first world IMC base, the production end of the quest for oil, and if you really want to be challenged, try bouncing around Africa, South America or the Middle East setting up and moving bases every three months.  Better yet,  take on a management role setting up these operations;  dealing with temporary import laws, custom brokers, national aviation officials, aviation fuel, hotel headaches, permit after permit after permit, and endless KPI requests from tier one, two and even tier three customers, stay calm while AK47 touting cops try to detain you because some competitor whispered into someone's ear that you were smuggling drugs or perhaps flying in mercenaries to over throw their government.  Time for the big boy pants.  Not to get too full of myself, but please, unless you've been there, quell the attitude.  The North Sea is not the be all end all.  But, offshore flying anywhere is chock full of egos and attitude, and I often miss strapping a bucket to a Huey and fighting some good ole forest fires, or perhaps taking some VFR Pumas into the high country for some UN fun would be a welcome change?  Dealing with over blown egos is all part of the game.  Embrace the challenges.  Therein lies the spice of life.