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.