Extended Workdays

Well, today was my birthday and I have survived to live to at least 33 years old. As a birthday present to myself, I will begin working 7 days a week starting tomorrow. I don't even have the luxury to stay up late playing video games and sleeping in the day after my birthday. My coworkers were kind enough to host a grill-out session tonight and cooked me a very nice Angus beef T-bone steak. I was dumb enough to eat basically two of all the desserts we had (individual cake pieces, brownies and ice cream). What they hey, it is my birthday so why not. Besides, I will do my best to sweat it all out tomorrow when I'm out and about the plant chasing down flanges, gaskets and workers.

Speaking of work, some of the operators have been telling me it has already reached over 50C (122F) based on car thermometers and local gauges. None of the websites I have been too have shown the weather above 43C. Those same operators also told me that the government 'adjusts' their temperature readings because they need to shut down all outside work when the weather is above 50C, or at least allow more and longer breaks during the work day. Can't be letting the laborers having that now can we!

Well, going to check my e-mail and try to get some sleep since I need to be up tomorrow at my usual time.

Heat and Dust

Last week of work has been really hot and dusty. The temperature has been around 115-117F everyday, the only 'good' thing is the humidity has been <10% most of the time. It was so hot the other day when I was on top of one of the taller towers, my sweat droplets would evaporate before they reached the ground. It was so hot and dry that you could even take a cold can of soda outside and there would not be any condensation on the sides of the can. There just wasn't any water in the air to make the can 'sweat'. Although, there was more than enough heat to make me sweat in less than a minute. Trapesing around the plant for 7 hrs or more outside in this heat has made me really appreciate frequent water breaks. I do not know how the general laborers on the construction crews are able to do manual labor all day long here. Even if they don't work at too much beyond a snails pace some days.

Back from England

Surprise, surprise! I'm late doing another entry. This really shouldn't come as a shock to anyone by know (that is if you know me).

Been back in Saudi for a week now after my 13 day excursion to England. I was fortunate enough to be able to spend 4 days with Toni and Shaun in Rugby, England right after I arrived. Although they were not able to serve as my own personal pub crawl guides, they did find a suitable standin...Shaun's nephew, Simon. Unfortunately, I was a little let down when we went out drinking Friday night. My previous experiences with pub crawling with an Englishman was with ex-pat's playing rugby in the States. I was always the one who was crawling and asking for mercy when I went drinking with them, so I figured I would have some issues when I went out on the town with Simon and his band mate Stix 13. They were half of a rock and roll band called Jukebox Junkies (http://www.myspace.com/jukeboxjunkiesmusic) (Free plug you guys!!!), so I figured they rocked all day and partied all night. That notion was rapidly dispelled as the night was still young and both of them were rather glassy eyed. Although I must admit Simon was able to motate under his own power at the end of the night, whereas Stix was rather unsteady and we made sure we escorted him over to his upset girlfriend's place (she wasn't happy we got him all liquored up...imagine that!). The next night (Sat) was Simon's b-day and he was having his party at a local pub (The Courthouse) where his band was actually playing. Due to a bungled dinner arrangement, Toni, Shaun and I were late getting to the pub, but we were able to catch about 80% of the show. Even playing a full set of songs while continously inebertating Jack's and Coke they played really well and the crowd didn't slow down or get quite the whole night. To add to the night, the band even had me come to the front of the crowd so they could thank me publically for getting them piss ass drunk the night before. Not to let them down, I did come up and have a drink with them and proceeded to out drink them again after the set was over. I'm not sure if they will want to go out drinking with any of Toni and Shaun's American friends again. Although they were always free to say 'no' to the rounds I bought. I did have the 'pleasure' of introducting both Simon and B-bop to a shot called the 'cement mixer'. it is a shot of lime juice followed immediately with a shot of Bailey's Irish Creame. You actually hold the lime juice in your mouth until you shoot the Bailey's and then you either swish the drink in your mouth or have the server (hopefully a good lookin' waitress) shake your head vigoursly and then attempt to swallow. For those who haven't tried this, the lime juice reacts with the creame in the Bailey's and 'currdles' forming solid chunks in your mouth that you then have to swallow. The taste isn't bad, but the texture of the shot is really horrible, so bad that it was listed in the "Ugly" section of the "Good, Bad and Ugly" shots at the college bar I went to at OU (O'Connells).

During my visit to England I went to London, Rugby, Sherwood, Nottingham, York, Coventry, Hastings, and Dover. I really screwed up in my historical visits though. It wasn't until 3 days before I was scheduled to leave that I found out I could have purchased a Traveller's Membership to the England Heritage Society. This basically meant I would have been able to get into ALL of the England Heritage Sites for free instead of paying the 3-10L pounds per site. One other issue that was frustrating was the hassle to find available parking at any of the sites and then having to dig around for the "pay and display" fees. I didn't bother trying to keep track of how much I spent on parking fees alone. My visit to the Dover castle and the White Cliffs was really fun. Although the wind was howling and the castle keep was closed for renovations it was probably the highlight of my visit. The second highlight would have been going to Castle Warwick with Toni and Shaun. The castle is now run by Madam Tussauds which means they have a lot of wax figures spread throughout the castle to give a better feel of how it might have looked. Personally, I thought they sort of detracted from it, but if it brings the crowds in, why not. Shortly after arriving we were able to watch a falcony exhibition be put on. The trainer had every thing from a young owl to a 21 year old Bald Eagle. All of the birds were fantastic to watch fly around and the trainer had a great sense of humor.

As with the Ireland trip photos, I am still searching for a reasonable way to get all of my photos up on the web so everyone can see them finally.

Got to go as my dinner just arrived (my roomie ordered pizza!).

Lazy

I have been very lazy the last two weeks in regards to my Blog. Tried to upload my Ireland pictures last week. Due to the very slow upload speed we have, even after 2 hrs not one picture had been uploaded so I gave up. The weather the last week has been very, very strange. Not only has the temperature been reasonable (<90) but we have had rain 3 days during the week and although they didn't last more than 30 minutes, it did rain very heavily during that time.

Been busy in the plant area at work. One of my current responsibilites has me out and about all 9 hours that I'm at work each day. When it is all done and over with, I think I will have climbed every tower at least a dozen times and probably every flight of stairs a couple of hundred times. If I can keep my eating under control, I might even be able to lose a few unwanted pounds while I'm at it. Speaking of eating, I have become very addicted to the cafeteria at the plant. I now have a full serving of salad and veggies every lunch. In addition, my daily diet includes soup, rice and olives when I'm at work. To sate my sweet tooth, I have been fortunate in that they have diet desserts every day at the plant. Although they don't have soda fountains, if I do have a soda I try to make sure it is Diet 7Up. The food they serve is really good too (as long as you like either fish, lamb or chicken) and there is a wide enough selection of veggetarian food that if they had a larger selection of non-meat protein I would even try being a veggetarian while here (at least for a while).

Now that I have a roommate (my boss to boot!) I have had to make sure that I pick up after myself a little better and sooner than I would normally. Although I was a little trepidious about having my boss as a roomy it has work out OK so far (only been about 1.5 wks so far). We have already gotten him playing XBox with us, and to our dismay he has picked up EVERY game rather quickly. We would normally 'ease' him into each game, but after about 2 hrs, we had to take the gloves off and get 'serious' or at least as serious as you can with the games we have. Honestly, how seriously can you take a game that lets you jump 30 ft in the air, turn 180 degrees and shoot a rocket launcher across an airfield? Must admit it has been rather fun to play the games on our new 42" plasma TV that we picked up here. Since we split the cost 4 ways it really wasn't too expensive. Now if we could just get a better internet connection I could really enjoy it by playing online with all my friends!

Well, going to try and contact my parents and talk to them for a little bit, so I'm going to cut this post off here.

Hope everyone back in the States is doing well and CONGRATS to Scott and Angela on the newest addition to their family, the daughter Wren Tucker born March 30! Looks like I'm a surrogate Aunt again.

Returned from Ireland

I have returned from Ireland and am back at work. Would say hard at work, but that wouldn't be quite true. Been too lazy the last few days to do a full blog, but I figured I had better put something up before everyone wonders where the heck I've been. Took LOTS and LOTS of pictures while in Ireland (over 600!), in fact so many I filled my 4gb memory card which was quite a shock! Due to the hassle of loading photos to directly to my blog I plan to upload all of the pictures to Kodak Gallery and then add links here for everyone. However, I will select some of the better ones to add here. Need to get back to work now, but I will do a more detailed blog with my adventures in Ireland later this week (promise).

Last Weekend before 1st "Vacation"

This was my last weekend before heading to Ireland for my first 'vacation'. Been rather lacadasial in keeping my blog updated this week. This posting will be on some of the things I have observed and noted while in Saudi Arabia.

Driving
- Driving in Saudi Arabia goes against almost every thing I learned about driving in the US. Although nearly everyone I know speeds to some extent, most of the time it is only 5-10 mph above. Here, it seems like it is a challenge to see if you can double the speed limit. In an effort to go that higher speed, the traffic lanes are strictly recommendations. I have seen people use both shoulders of the road to pass people or even make an extra lane between two others. The later is normally done at stop lights. It is really interesting to see someone in a mid-size or larger car attempt (and succeed most times) to 'creep' up to the front of the line at a stop light. Or even better yet, zoom to the front of the turn lane only to speed off at the light change to go straight. The other popular pasttime at stop lights is to make two or even three turning lanes out of one. This normally means people are piled two wide in the regular lane and someone at the front of the straight travel lane has decided to turn left also. I have even witnessed people making u-turns from the straight travel lane across two 'official' turn lanes. I am very glad that I am not required to drive in country on my relocation.

Religion
- Prayer times are VERY VERY important to know whether you are Muslim or not. As there are 5 major prayer times every day with three happening after the lunch hour and the times change by the week it can become rather combursome to keep it all straight. All of the stores and shops will close for prayer time, which can make going grocery shopping or dining out a real challenge at times. Currently, evening prayers are at 3:15pm, 4:45pm and 6:30pm. Most times, we have found you need to plan to be at the store or dinner by 7pm or later to do anything. Some people take this so seriously that they will stop nearly anything they are doing to attend prayer. The scariest example of this was related second hand to me. A man was an acting fire captain at a chemical plant when a compressor fire broke out. When the fire captain for the area where the fire was happening showed up to assist (he didn't run the fire crews as the company had a policy to have someone from another area do it to exclude any potential conflicts about stopping the fire versus saving equipment). Anyways, the acting fire captain was constantly looking at his watch as the fire was being worked adn then abruptly told the area fire captain that he had to leave as it was prayer time. The guy actually left in the middle of the fire and didn't even really do anything. I am going to assume this was a really extreme case and not to treat it as 'normal'.

Smells
- For me, Saudi Arabia has a very distinct odor to it. I think it is a combination of the number of people, the prevalant use of spices (for food and drink) and tobacco that combine to give a very unique ordor to nearly every place you visit. I may grow to like it the longer I'm here, but right now it is very strong and noticeable to me when I go outside my apartment compound to the plant or into the city. Nearly every outing into the city or shopping areas include visits into some of the spice/coffee shops. They have bins and bins of spices, coffees and numerous other things that I can only identify as dried 'something'. The mixture of so many different things is overwhelming for me and I can normally only be in the shops for a minute or two before I have to get out.

Overall I am enjoying my experience in Saudi Arabia, but it as started to highlight things that I have taken for granted growing up in the States.

Fourth Week

My fourth week in Saudi is nearly over, which means I only have two more before my first 'free' European trip. I still need to book my plane tickets and try to find someplace to stay while in Ireland. Plan to go to the Guiness brewery, the Blarney Stone, St. Patrick's Cathedral and not 100% sure what else. If I'm really, really lucky, I might be able to catch some local rugby matches too, which would be awesome.

Spent this work week out in the plant getting VERY, VERY dusty. Another 'dust bowl' rolled in on Sunday and took most of Monday before it cleared out. Somehow, I have become sick and ended up staying home on Monday, but was feeling a lot better today and was able to make it for a full day of stair climbing and jungle gym work around the scaffolding. They have so much scaffolding erected in the plant area it is almost unbelieveable. I don't think you can go more than 10 feet outside the two major walkways and not have to step over, under, or around some. They even have some placed partially in the stairways, which can make going from floor to floor really interesting.

After being here for four weeks I have begun to notice a distinct lack of female voices. The only time I hear a woman's voice is if it is on the TV. That is something that I don't think I will get used to. Although I know some people who would probably pay good money to be in my situation (oddly enough, I think they are all married men!).

Other than the good food over here, I am enjoying the fact that I get to watch rugby on live TV without having to pay for an ultra-premium cable package. Get to watch both Southern and Northern hemisphere leagues and national team matches! Woot! Woot! The downside to that is that I'm also stuck watch that other European sport, Cricket, if I can't change the channel fast enough.

Weather is starting to warm up, but still stays below 90 so far. Don't think I have but maybe 4 or so more weeks of that. Which is another good reason to take my time off in cooler climates.

Well, I should sign off and get ready for work tomorrow.

Miss everyone in the States and hope y'all are doin' fine!

Dust Bowl?

We had our first sand storm yesterday. When we headed into the plant in the morning, the visibility was probably only 50 yards or less. When I first looked out the windows I thought it was just really hazy out. No such luck, instead it was the air being full of really fine dust/sand. Once we got to the plant and went inside for the training class, the visibility in the building was nearly as bad as it was outside. We were able to look down one hallway and it looked just like a smoke filled bar or something. The building we were in is not sealed all that well and people have a tendency to leave doorways open which made it even worse. One of the South African's in the class was joking that any time he washed his car it would either rain (what little bit they get) or a sand storm would roll in. The wind blew all day and the visibility never got any better that whole day. Didn't have my camera on me at the time or I would have tried to take some pictures.

Various Pictures

OK, I see none of my picture captions came through. Will do my best to describe what the *bleep* that thing is in the pictures.

Restroom pic - Yes, that is a 'standard' Saudi toilet. Yes, it is a toilet seat situated directly on the floor. No, you don't actually sit on it. Yes, I'm glad my living quarters has an American sytle commode.

Me in a tent. This was taken at Khalil's family's tent at a 'campground' outside of Bahrain. The base carpet in the tent was HUGE and spotless (not sure how they managed that one!).

Picture of part of the 'campground' outside of Bahrain.

Group of co-workers out for dinner at the Brazilian place.

Random city art located around Bahrain.

Raymond in front of the mosque that was located near Ric's.

The mosque located near Ric's in Bahrain.

Ric's dinner in Bahrain. Good American style food.

All of my stuff for 9 months in Saudi.....is that all I really need? Why do I have a house if that is all I need?

Dad and I at the airport in Tri-cities. Two 'large' pieces of luggage, one 'carry on' size piece, one backpack and one brief case. Not a lot of volume for my stuff, but I got all the neccesities in there (XBox, personal laptop, video games...oh yeah and clothes.).

Second Week in Saudi

Worked 6 days the first week here (5 days of operator training and one day of misc.). A group of us (Raymond, Rodney, Paula (Rodney's wife), Jorge, Bill, Tom and I all went into Bahrain on our day off to eat out and do some shopping. Well, realy only three people shopped the rest of us just looked at all the neat stuff. We started off the day by leaving town at 7:45am and were able to make it across the dreaded causeway without incident (it has takn upwards of 8 hrs to make this trip in the past). Upon arrival in Bahrain, we ended up at Ric's (a dinner Rodney knew about) for breakfast. They had a very extensive menu and we all ended up eating an American style breakfast. I had the blueberry pancakes and actual pork sausage patties and it was all very good. Next stop was to the shopping 'center', which in this case was an area of town with a bunch of shops all squeezed in together in the same area. Unfortunately, since it was Friday (Saudi's Sunday) all of the shops were closed until 4pm for prayer. We all piled back into the vehicles and headed to the "Gold City", sort of an indoor mall dedicated to jewerly and such. Can't count the number of times I had to say "I don't wear a watch" or "I don't need a watch" to the guys behind the counters as we walked around looking at stuff. I don't wear watches and when I do, I hate paying $20 for an authentic one in the States, let alone paying $100+ for a knockoff. Looked at lots of neat jewerly and such and was rather grateful (for once) that I'm not currently seeing someone, cause it would have been easy to spend a lot of money on several pieces for her if I was! After looking around the stores we meet up with Khailil for an early dinner at a great Brazilian resturant. For those who haven't been to one, it is heaven on earth for anyone on an Atkin's diet. They basically keep bring out skewers of different meats (chicken sausage, pork sausage, chicken rolls, chicken wings, beef brisket, lamp, steak, etc.) until you say no more. Me being me, I was the last one to finally say no and I didn't pass up on ANY of the meats as they came out!

I have added some pics from the trip to Bahrain and hope they come through OK.

Frustrations

Just spent the last hour putting together my first post from Saudi and what happens?..... The dang network crashes and I get to redo it again. Going to get some sleep and try again tomorrow.

Day 1 in Saudi

Phew........was able to find my 'Draft' version of my first day in Saudi post, so I don't have to completely redo it. Woot! Woot!

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The trip from Kingsport, TN to Jubail, Saudi Arabia was fairly uneventful. It was a little bit of a shock when the pilot came on the PA system on the Atlanta to Dubai flight and announced that thanks to a favorable tail wind that the flight would only be aobut 12.5hrs. For those that haven't taken this flight, it is normally a 14 hr flight. Needless to say, it was one heck of a tail wind that they found up there. It was so 'good' that we even got to strap in tight for some enterataining turbulence about 4 hrs or so it the flight. I reminded me a lot of the turbulence when you took a little puddle jumper airplane over the Sierras or Appalachians.



Customs and Immigration at the King Farrid Airport in Saudi Arabia was a breeze other then they were taking about 5 min to process one person through immigration. With a full 777 flight, that was a lot of people and a lot of time to have to stand in line and wait. Fortunately I was the 4th person in my line, so it wasn't too bad. Besides, after going through that i still had to wait for my luggage to come through.



We arrived at the living compound at about 1:15am and then we had to go in and sign paperwork for keys to an apartment that we had stayed in previously. As usual, when we got into the apartment everything from in the kitchen was sitting out on the counter. We haven't quite figured out if they just like to display everything for you when you arrive or if they pulled it all out so they can see if anything has been lost, stolen or broken. The big surprise came when we looked around for what I had come to expect as the 'usual' welcome here supplies, single servings of breakfast items (juice, milk, cereral, coffee). Not only had they forgotten to leave any of that, but they also didn't leave any toilet paper in any of the bathrooms. Fortunately, I discovered that little lapse in service prior to being 'caught in the act' and really being in trouble. However, my roommate, Raymond, was able to come to my rescue as he had the foresight to pack a single roll of TP in his luggage was willing to give me use of it. Went straight to bed after that and tried to get some sleep. Woke up around 4am and couldn't get back to sleep so I got up took my shower and watched some TV until we went into work.

The training class we are doing this week is for the new operators and there were about 16 people in the class or so. The class is a mix of different nationalities and it is taken some practice to get used to everyone's accent. As the first part of the training was to go over the basics of Eastman, chemical safety, and overall plant principles, Ty was doing most of the talking. Although I was glad he was going over all this material, it meant I had to attempt to stay awake in the front of the class that was overly warm in a half way comfortable chair. Although I know I didn't drool on myself, I'm not 100% sure if I was awake for the whole thing.

Last US Work Week

I am down to my last work week in the US for quite some time. My flight leaves this Thursday afternoon. As usual, I have procrastinated enough that I still have a lengthy list of stuff to complete. However, I was at least smart enough to sit down and write up a check sheet of all the things I need/want to take with me. Granted, the list was two and a half pages long (hand written), but at least I have something to work from.

Making sure I take full advantage of the liquidation sale at Circuit City before I leave. Picked up some nice accessories for the XBox, like a 1yr subscription to XBox Live at 30% off, too bad I could find any of the XBox Points cards =( . However, it was nice to get tax software cheap, especially since my parents will have to do my convoluted tax returns (two companies, relocation expenses, international business travel income, sale and purchase of a home).

Have been able to spend at least some time with everyone I have made friends with since I have moved here and even made the trip to Salisbury to see everyone in NC before I left. Someone asked what I would miss the most when I'm in Saudi that they could send me in care packages. I had to laugh, because of regardless of where I go, I always miss the people I leave behind and didn't think I could get them shipped to me. Although, it would be interesting to see what would happened at Saudi customs if one of the ladies tried to ship themselves in =)

Since I won't be able to sleep much the first day I get to Saudi (this Friday US time), I will make sure I get a new post added when I land.

Prepping to Leave

Today is Jan 12, which means I leave for my short term relocation in 17 days. Have a lot to finish up before going overseas.
- Finish 4hrs of training material that is to be given the week I arrive.
- Get my home security system installed and operational (fortunately, I only have to watch the installation and not actually do it).
- Get my power of attorney set up (legal and medical).
- Eat at as many 'ethnic' restraurants as I can in the area. Rather limited selection being in the Tri-cities area (German, Italian, Indian, Thai, Japanese). :-(
- 'Winterize' my motorcycle as it won't be used while I'm gone.
- Travel to AL to see Scott graduate from helicopter flight school (finally!!!).
- Spend time with the few friends I have made in the area.