Hola!
So the past couple of days have been busy. I have made more friends, most of them from Malaysia and Indonesia. A couple, though, come from Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Wednesday evening we went to a 5-Star restaurant in downtown Abu Dhabi called The Beach Rotana Hotel. It was huge and gorgeous! Marble columns, real brocade curtains, massive chandeliers, etc-Just glad I was not required to pay for it. I sat with my new Malaysian friends for dinner, and then afterwards they got picture happy. Really picture happy. I should be in many potential facebook pictures now.
Abu Dhabi (or what I saw of it) is so beautiful! And desert-y. The roads are very nice, thought the lanes are narrow. The max driving speed is 60 km/h which none of the locals adhere to. I heard a story about a guy going 140 km/h in a taxi to the airport and there were still cars passing him so fast it made the taxi seem like it was standing still. Also, don’t worry for my safety, as SLB requires me to wear a 3-point seatbelt at all times. Penalty for not wearing a seatbelt, or not making sure everyone is wearing one and they catch you or a wreck occurs? Termination. Anyway, Abu Dhabi is very full of buildings but they do not look like American houses. U.A.E. houses are huge and very square, made out of concrete sort of material, with flat-topped roofs and terraces on multiple floors. I was told this is the oil field side of town, so thus the people are very very rich. Most buildings in town have writing on them in both English and Arabic, which has the potential to be very helpful if I come back here for Engg 1. I can’t tell if there is legit parking anywhere though. They just seem to park randomly where ever they fit.
Fun fact about alcohol and Abu Dhabi? If you are drunk and in public they will arrest you, put you in jail for however long they deem necessary, and then you can be deported. End of story. And yes, it has happened to an engineer from my company.
Classes are going ok. I have yet to actually learn a whole lot of new information. However I have been through this twice before, so I wasn’t really expecting epiphanies to occur in my life. The different people make it interesting for the most part. However one frustrating aspect is the language barrier. All of us speak English, it is just the degree of competency that varies. An instructor asked one of the students how much he was understanding at one point, and the student’s answer was “30 percent.” Also, though many of the students are very proficient in English, little used or specialized words come up that need to be defined for the class, which does take some time.
Oh, and driving…wow. Our instructor got really upset one time. A girl from a SE Asian country asked if she had to wear a seatbelt when on vacation because people from her country aren’t required to. His response, “You’d have to be stupid not to.” Then, one of the more traditional guys from a Gulf country stated that seatbelts shouldn’t be required for speeds up to 80 km (about 50 mph) because you wouldn’t be hurt in the accident. The teacher replied to the effect that the engineer was very very wrong, and when the engineer argued with him it got worse. He stated the engineer obviously had very bad driving training, and proceeded to tell us gruesome accident stories and that if we didn’t want to wear a seatbelt we could walk away from a the job right now. It was impressive to watch.
On the terms of safety, I really do feel very safe working for this company. They do not lay you out to dry. We are provided with training, resources, and empowerment (which sounds odd, I know) when we join. They have the most stringent safety regulation and most thorough safety training in the industry. This is really nice to know. As employees we also have the responsibility to “stop the job.” If I see anything I find questionable, or potentially dangerous, not only am I allowed, but I am required to say something. If I don’t and something happens I will at least be disciplined, and (if the result was major or catastrophic) I will be fired. Even if I was just watching and not physically involved at all. It’s nice to know I can speak up even if I am a newbie.
The personal safety presentation was kind of terrifying. Not that anything will probably ever happen to me, but I definitely should never have watched, “Taken.”
Found out that in the U.A.E. if you don’t have a U.A.E. government license to give CPR, it is illegal to do so. They will put you in jail even if you were able to save the person.
Driving training was pretty awesome. The instructors were all from Australia and G.B. and they were hilarious and really nice. Well, they weren’t so hilarious when they were telling depressing and sad accident stories, but they did get their point across. Also, the safe driving information they told us was really helpful. Today I did a commentary drive in Abu Dhabi as part of the training. It was sooo sweet. I passed the entire practical, even though I have a major handicap when it comes to roundabouts. We need more of them for practice in Kansas. Also, if any of you think you know how to drive them correctly, you are potentially doing it wrong. Not because I just know everything about them now, but because they are actually quite tricky. And Abu Dhabi has a very large number of them! So I definitely learned fast.
Anyway, I am officially done with OFS-1 now! I have tomorrow off (I am going to sleep!!) and then tomorrow night at 10 pm I head to the airport. My Malaysian friend, who is also heading to Labuan, and I will wait there until our flight leaves at 2:45 am. That would be 5:45 pm for y’all in Kansas. I plan to sleep for the 7 hour flight. All of it. Then I get in to Kuala Lumpur at 2 pm (remember I just added 4 hours onto my already 9 hour time change), wait for hours for my next flight, and head out to Labuan just in time to get in at 9:10 pm (my time) and 8:10 pm yours. WOOHOO…more jetlag. It will be great!
This is definitely long enough (sorry!) so I am heading out now for some food and relaxation.
I love and miss you guys already.
Becca
Friday, July 30, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Here!
Hellooooo ya'll.
I am officially in the Middle East for the first time in my life! It is warmer than I thought it would be. However, it is slightly better than Saudi Arabia, which I have heard gets up to 55 C with regularity. The airport has been the most odd part of the experience so far. As I was waiting for my driver to show up (which took about an hour) I got to watch the passengers streaming through the exit gate and I felt so..foreign, I guess, for the first time in my life. It was kind of cool, actually. Also odd, as I have never seen so many women completely covered before (maybe one or two, but that's it). Most either had a slit for their eyes, or were so covered that they looked like flowing black masses of material. There were also some whose faces were exposed, and they had a barrier thing over their mouth,which I had never seen before. I need to look it up and see what that is called!
After being picked up by the driver, along with 2 other Americans named Tyler and Josh, a Frenchman named Jonathon, and a Russian (the only one at orientation) named Nikolai, we headed towards MLC. MLC is the new complex Schlumberger built for teaching and training employees working in the Middle East and Asia. It is so huge!!!!!!!!! The building I am in has 3 floors and it is new and techie looking with bean bag chairs and fun looking places to hang out. There are juice bars, libraries, and game rooms of all kinds. I will definitely be able to work out in the evenings, hooray! I haven't worked out yet due to wonderful jetlag. I am kind of exhausted. Last night I fell asleep at 9 pm, got up at 4:19 am. The evening before I went to bed after midnight, and woke up promptly a little after 5 in the morning. Hopefully tonight I will stay up until a reasonable hour, so I can sleep in until at least 5 am tomorrow.
Why am I getting up at 5? Well, I am going to skype with my parents (hopefully!!) and boyfriend most probably. I am pretty excited about both! This facility does not have wireless, so it took me awhile to get an ethernet cord in order to have a connection to the internet. Also, as I don't have a cell phone at the moment it is doubly nice to have to have this it of connection to the outside world.
TV here is pretty awesome, btw. Most of the channels aren’t in English but that’s ok. I have one English news channel (technically British), and a movie channel that played The Interpreter with Arabic subtitles. For the record, Arabic subtitles are relatively distracting on a TV, but I think this is only because they are flowy and pretty.
Ok. First day of OFS-1 is over!! It officially lasted from 8 am to 6:30 pm. I mean, we did get an hour for lunch, but still, it was kind of a long time. Most of it was relatively unexciting (history, overview, harassment policies), but there were a couple pretty cool parts. The first was that our first instructor named Denni made us go through the entire class (over 90 people) and everyone had to introduce themselves, giving information like name, future location, past oilfield experience, and college graduated from. We have people from sooooo many different countries! It was like going through all the colors of the rainbow and listening to an amazing array of possible accents. My two favorite to listen to were those from Papua New Guinea and Russia. The most surprising accent was that of the Middle Eastern guys (especially those from Saudi Arabia). All of them have awesome and flowery sounding names, but when they say anything else it comes out sounding incredibly…American, as they mostly studied for their entire college career in America.
Orientation has been very much like I thought it would be so far. Most of it is review, but it's not too bad. It would be slightly more helpful if I wasn't jeglagged. I am staying at MLC (which has some name I am not remembering) currently. MLC is a huge training facility in Abu Dhabi for Schlumberger. Its one of the few places in the world where all the employees from different segments can train at the same place. The layout of the living quarters is pretty sweet in a beehive-ish sort of way. All the rooms are one person and everyone has their own bathroom, with all the furniture looking vaguely techy and IKEA-like. Everything is very comfortable so I have no complaints there!
Well, that is a brief overview for now! I will add more detail tomorrow.
The tired engineer,
Becca
I am officially in the Middle East for the first time in my life! It is warmer than I thought it would be. However, it is slightly better than Saudi Arabia, which I have heard gets up to 55 C with regularity. The airport has been the most odd part of the experience so far. As I was waiting for my driver to show up (which took about an hour) I got to watch the passengers streaming through the exit gate and I felt so..foreign, I guess, for the first time in my life. It was kind of cool, actually. Also odd, as I have never seen so many women completely covered before (maybe one or two, but that's it). Most either had a slit for their eyes, or were so covered that they looked like flowing black masses of material. There were also some whose faces were exposed, and they had a barrier thing over their mouth,which I had never seen before. I need to look it up and see what that is called!
After being picked up by the driver, along with 2 other Americans named Tyler and Josh, a Frenchman named Jonathon, and a Russian (the only one at orientation) named Nikolai, we headed towards MLC. MLC is the new complex Schlumberger built for teaching and training employees working in the Middle East and Asia. It is so huge!!!!!!!!! The building I am in has 3 floors and it is new and techie looking with bean bag chairs and fun looking places to hang out. There are juice bars, libraries, and game rooms of all kinds. I will definitely be able to work out in the evenings, hooray! I haven't worked out yet due to wonderful jetlag. I am kind of exhausted. Last night I fell asleep at 9 pm, got up at 4:19 am. The evening before I went to bed after midnight, and woke up promptly a little after 5 in the morning. Hopefully tonight I will stay up until a reasonable hour, so I can sleep in until at least 5 am tomorrow.
Why am I getting up at 5? Well, I am going to skype with my parents (hopefully!!) and boyfriend most probably. I am pretty excited about both! This facility does not have wireless, so it took me awhile to get an ethernet cord in order to have a connection to the internet. Also, as I don't have a cell phone at the moment it is doubly nice to have to have this it of connection to the outside world.
TV here is pretty awesome, btw. Most of the channels aren’t in English but that’s ok. I have one English news channel (technically British), and a movie channel that played The Interpreter with Arabic subtitles. For the record, Arabic subtitles are relatively distracting on a TV, but I think this is only because they are flowy and pretty.
Ok. First day of OFS-1 is over!! It officially lasted from 8 am to 6:30 pm. I mean, we did get an hour for lunch, but still, it was kind of a long time. Most of it was relatively unexciting (history, overview, harassment policies), but there were a couple pretty cool parts. The first was that our first instructor named Denni made us go through the entire class (over 90 people) and everyone had to introduce themselves, giving information like name, future location, past oilfield experience, and college graduated from. We have people from sooooo many different countries! It was like going through all the colors of the rainbow and listening to an amazing array of possible accents. My two favorite to listen to were those from Papua New Guinea and Russia. The most surprising accent was that of the Middle Eastern guys (especially those from Saudi Arabia). All of them have awesome and flowery sounding names, but when they say anything else it comes out sounding incredibly…American, as they mostly studied for their entire college career in America.
Orientation has been very much like I thought it would be so far. Most of it is review, but it's not too bad. It would be slightly more helpful if I wasn't jeglagged. I am staying at MLC (which has some name I am not remembering) currently. MLC is a huge training facility in Abu Dhabi for Schlumberger. Its one of the few places in the world where all the employees from different segments can train at the same place. The layout of the living quarters is pretty sweet in a beehive-ish sort of way. All the rooms are one person and everyone has their own bathroom, with all the furniture looking vaguely techy and IKEA-like. Everything is very comfortable so I have no complaints there!
Well, that is a brief overview for now! I will add more detail tomorrow.
The tired engineer,
Becca
Friday, July 16, 2010
One Week
Here it is! In 7 days exactly I will be flying from the United States of America to the United Arab Emirates. In 16 days I will be flying into Labuan Malaysia!!! It's kind of surreal and incredibly scary at this point. This is the part of the adventure where the heroine is standing at the edge of the cliff and she has one step to take and if she takes it there is no going back. It is impossible to walk back onto a precipice that has been left. Nothing will ever be exactly the same. When I come back to visit my home, people will be different and places will have changed. Even if they don't change all that much, I will. I cannot even fathom the places I will be or the experiences I will have. The towers, mountains, oceans, people, rigs, food, wildlife, weather...I don't know what it will be like, and I am so excited!
I do get to see all of my siblings one more time, which I am excited about. James is visiting this weekend, Amanda and Erik will be around for my grandfather's birthday on Sunday and then potentially lunch on Monday, and I will see Helen, Ross, and my unborn niece on Tuesday (hopefully). My boyfriend, Adam, is coming up for the week starting on Saturday evening, which I am incredibly excited about! I get to eat dinner with my parents a couple more times and watch them argue about nonsensical things over the dinner table, which to be entitrely honest, might make me a bit teary. I can't remember a dinner growing up when dad didn't say something ridiculous and mum didn't take him to task for it.
Next Friday, Adam is taking me to the airport in Manhattan. My flight leaves for Dallas at 12:05 pm and I will probably be ridiculously emotional on it. I'll miss him. We're going to try and see if we can successfully handle a uber-super-long distance relationship which I am totally up for! It's something I said I would never do,but now I can't imagine not doing it. Maybe I just didn't meet a guy that was worth making the effort for before. :)
I'll fly from Manhattan to Dallas to Chicago, and then 13 hours after leaving chicago, I arrive in Abu Dhabi. I'll be picked up at the airport and put in a hotel with a welcome package and a stipend for food for the 7 days following it. So much stuff to do!! And yes, I haven't packed yet. Wish me luck!!!
Love,
Becca
I do get to see all of my siblings one more time, which I am excited about. James is visiting this weekend, Amanda and Erik will be around for my grandfather's birthday on Sunday and then potentially lunch on Monday, and I will see Helen, Ross, and my unborn niece on Tuesday (hopefully). My boyfriend, Adam, is coming up for the week starting on Saturday evening, which I am incredibly excited about! I get to eat dinner with my parents a couple more times and watch them argue about nonsensical things over the dinner table, which to be entitrely honest, might make me a bit teary. I can't remember a dinner growing up when dad didn't say something ridiculous and mum didn't take him to task for it.
Next Friday, Adam is taking me to the airport in Manhattan. My flight leaves for Dallas at 12:05 pm and I will probably be ridiculously emotional on it. I'll miss him. We're going to try and see if we can successfully handle a uber-super-long distance relationship which I am totally up for! It's something I said I would never do,but now I can't imagine not doing it. Maybe I just didn't meet a guy that was worth making the effort for before. :)
I'll fly from Manhattan to Dallas to Chicago, and then 13 hours after leaving chicago, I arrive in Abu Dhabi. I'll be picked up at the airport and put in a hotel with a welcome package and a stipend for food for the 7 days following it. So much stuff to do!! And yes, I haven't packed yet. Wish me luck!!!
Love,
Becca
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Dear ladies and gents :)
It's finished! My visa has officially been approved. Now my flights can be scheduled for the 23rd, and I can be off! I will not actually get my visa, though, until I arrive in Labuan. There they will take my passport and I will officially be approved to work :) It has been a long time coming and I can definitely say I am relieved. However at the same time I am full of mixed feelings, joy and more than a little sadness. Curiousity, excitement, apprehension, and just a little fear. It doesn't even feel the slightest bit real yet. It just seems to be this big unrealistic dream that I get excited about when I talk with my friends, but I can only hope for their eventual realization.
But it's here! (Almost!) I have approximately 10 more days with my parents, 5 more days with my boyfriend, and 14 more days altogether to finish writing thank you notes and packing! Ahhh!!!
Ok, breathing, just breathing... :)
So excited to start this adventure! It will be epic, I promise.
Love you so much,
Becca
But it's here! (Almost!) I have approximately 10 more days with my parents, 5 more days with my boyfriend, and 14 more days altogether to finish writing thank you notes and packing! Ahhh!!!
Ok, breathing, just breathing... :)
So excited to start this adventure! It will be epic, I promise.
Love you so much,
Becca
Friday, July 2, 2010
ALMOST HERE!
Guess what?! Guess what?!! I got an email today telling me that my visa should be done next week. This means I get to leave July 23rd :) Adventures! Foreign food! A big kid paycheck!!!
Slightly excited here. Will post when I find out it is done and approved.
Becca
Slightly excited here. Will post when I find out it is done and approved.
Becca
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