Well, considering the embarrassing time frame between my last post and this one, I feel like I can sum up the rest of my year as 'same same, but different.' What exactly do I mean? Well, consider these comparisons between 2011 and 2012:
March:
2011 2012
Work Location: Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia Udhailiyah, Saudi Arabia
Work Segment: Coiled Tubing CoilTOOLS - ACTive
Training: Operational School - Tulsa Technical School - Tulsa
Mountain(s) Climbed: Kilimanjaro Shasta, Elbrus
Promotions: Grade 9 Grade 10
Countries Visited: Kenya United Arab Emirates
Tanzania Oman
Bahrain Thailand
Costa Rica Singapore
Russia
Vietnam
Cambodia
Malaysia
Nepal
2012 was a pretty awesome year overall though. It started off with me finding myself in Udhailiyah training to be a part of the ACTive team and it ended with me an integral part of that team. There were certainly ups and downs, as with any person on the planet, but overall I think it was an excellent year. Allow me to hit up the highlights.
January:
I started off the new year working in Udhailiyah trying to learn some ACTive stuff before actually attending the 4-week ACTive course in Abu Dhabi. Learned a ton of stuff about our newest technology, which luckily is widely used in Saudi. I visited the lovely neighboring Emirate of Dubai, a world-class city in some regards, an ego-driven glut of superfluous extravagance in others. I finally managed to go to Oman, the country I had originally signed up for and had spent 10 months researching and worrying about. It was absolutely awesome.
February:
Well, unfortunately for me, I managed to severely injure my ankle playing basketball the last week of ACTive school (even though I finally threw down a dunk!). That rendered me basically useless from a field engineer prospective, so I used February to hone my office engineer skills in Al-Khobar. It was my first experience as a handicapped member of society, and not having a car made it tremendously shitty. The only bright side was it gave me an opportunity to train for the upcoming SLB Technical School, back in my old stomping grounds of Tulsa, OK.
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| This pretty much summarizes February |
March:
Once I got my cast off, I was immediately sent to our remote base in Al-Khafji to act as a Coiled Tubing Coordinator. I'd previously been there when I went for my sole offshore job, but now I was relegated to the office, going to meetings with the client, arranging logistics, and generating job estimates. It was tremendously stressful as (1) I was grossly unqualified for the job, (2) I was still basically crippled and without a car so even getting food was a chore, (3) the client absolutely railed on me for stuff that was in no way in my control. Having said that, I learned a thing or two about rigs and big picture oilfield stuff. I also was able to finish my studying and my FE-1 project, so I was ready for Technical School. I passed my pre-school exams on a Friday afternoon, and by Sunday I was on a plane headed to the Far East for a quick vacation.
October:
I flew back from Abu Dhabi directly to Houston, TX where I submitted my documents to get my next Saudi visa. I also found out when I got to Houston that John's project had been cancelled, so our vacation was back on! I immediately re-booked as many flights as I could and was generally pumped. I celebrated by attending my buddy's brisket roast in Houston. I also attempted to get my skydiving certification in an aggressive and expensive program at Skydive Spaceland where you pay about 2 grand and you try to get 25 jumps completed in a week. I did the 'jump school' on that first Sunday in Houston and I found out that the place was super booked for the first two days. This was slightly disappointing, but they had a big promotion because Felix Baumgartner was supposed to attempt his supersonic skydive from space. Therefore Red Bull was coming to Skydive Spaceland to do 100 tandems in a day. So needless to say, the planes were pretty well booked. This set me back, considering I had already booked my flight on Friday out of Houston, so my timeframe was extremely limited. I found out the next couple days during the jumps the first rule of skydiving: weather is everything. There would be too many clouds, too low of clouds, too much wind, too much wind changes and even a little bit of rain. All of these scenarios prevent loads from going up. I also realized that I really wasnt enjoying it as much as when I was younger. I still really have no explanation, but I could never get to the level of relaxation during free-fall that is necessary to maintain good posture and control while falling. I still loved being under canopy (parachute) when I could navigate and around and play with the chute and eventually find the landing area and do my best to hit the target. I think I'll always love that, but watching myself on video during freefall I was pretty much just a piece of plywood, never establishing a good 'arch' of the body that is necessary for control of aerial maneuvers. So at the end of the day I only got 8 jumps done in 4 days and told my instructor that I wouldn't be continuing the program. (1) I was basically out of time. Weather and crowds had severely hindered the intended efficiency of the program I signed up for, but (2) I just wasn't loving it anymore. That really sucked because I thought I'd been looking forward to it for some time. We'll see what happens later because I still have like 15 jumps paid for, so whenever I'm back in Houston, I might as well see if I can fall in love with it again. Either way, I grabbed my visa on Friday and flew up to Chicago to see my fam and friends.
When I reached Chicago, I quickly met up with my siblings, including my sister who had delivered her first child about a week before, a beautiful baby girl named Corinne, after our deceased grandmother. It was really awesome to see my sis after all the complications that arose (premature by a month, c-section, lots of hospital time). But thank God, the baby and the mother are perfectly healthy these days. I also hung out with my Chicago buddies and got pretty rowdy for the first time in a while with them. On Sunday, I watched with my brother as Felix finally make his spacejump, which was absolutely riveting television. Seeing him just jump out of his balloon down towards earth was quite moving. It got tense as he appeared to spin dangerously out of control, but as soon as he hit the upper atmosphere, he managed to use his body to correct his spin and deploy his 'chute on time and land safely. It was an awesome jump and it pumped me up going into my vacation. That night, I took off from O'Hare, bound for Vietnam.
I landed in Hanoi, Vietnam the next day and waited around for John to arrive by getting a lovely Vietnamese lunch and a foot massage at the airport. We then headed to our hotel in Hanoi and took a much needed 7 hour nap. It was very poor execution on our part, so we just ended up walking around at about 10pm just in the immediate area around the hotel. The Vietnamese were pretty nice to us, as obvious westerners, and we didn't exactly see too many other 'white' folk around. The street-side vietnamese food was pretty good, but John and I grabbed some beer, passed out early, and woke up and watched the Tigers-Yankees playoff game as we packed up our stuff. It was nice that our hotel had ESPN and the game ended up being a part of the Tigers sweep of the Yanks. From Hanoi, we hopped on a bus to Haiphong, which is right by the coast. We hopped on another bus there which took us to the port outside the island of Cat Ba. We hopped on a boat to get to the far side of the island, where we then were taken by bus to downtown Cat Ba. Cat Ba is a large island off the east coast of Vietnam, close to the world famous Ha Long Bay, and our principal goal of being there was rock climbing, which we had read about. We booked a couple full-day adventures which took us kayaking all around the hundreds of islands surrounding Cat Ba. We did some outdoor rock climbing one island, where I realized that I can physically climb, but my form is somewhat of a work in progress. The next day we went deep-water solo-ing, which was the highlight of 'nam for me. A lot of these islands are just limestone towers that stick out of the shallow waters around Cat Ba. Therefore, they act as giant rock walls with the water being your cushion in case you fall. John got higher than any of the guides had seen, whereas I naturally struggled, but thoroughly enjoyed myself. The next day we slept in a bit and road motorbikes around the island. We took a little look inside Cat Ba National Park, but it wasn't anything tremendously memorable. We had a nice night drinking with our climbing guides and a few other foreigners, before heading back to Hanoi for an evening flight to Cambodia.
Up next was Siem Reap, Cambodia, the site of the legendary Angkor Wat. Cambodia was also the sight of one of the largest genocides in modern history during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. The regime sought to restore the country to an 11th-century style economic and social structure, with minimal western influences and a primarily agrarian society. Unfortunately, it also led to the deaths of over 1 million Cambodians (out of a population of 8 million) in what were later referred to as 'The Killing Fields.' Fortunately, the regime didn't last too long and since the country was fully reunited in 1993, it has blossomed and Siem Reap has become the tourist hub, with its close proximity to the Wat.
John and I met a nice tuk tuk driver at the airport, who ended up showing us around for the next couple days. We also stayed at a nice hostel just a touch outside the main strip in Siem Reap that was run by an awesome Australian guy in his 50s. The next day, our driver Hok, took us to the world-famous Angkor Wat, which is the largest Hindu temple complex in the world. It was awesome to finally see in person. It was once the centerpiece of the Khmer Empire, whose capital was at one point the most populous city in the world. It was amazingly intact, considering it was built in the 12th century, and its size was quite impressive. We drove around to a couple of the other temples around the area including Bayon, which had 240-some enormous faces carved into the stone.
The next day we took off to another temple way far away and then went to the Cambodian Landmine Museum, which offered a sobering prospective on daily life in rural Cambodia. There's still millions of landmines in Cambodia and people rarely die from them, but they are permanently handicapped and disfigured. Afterwards, John and I went to a Cambodian military base and fired off some AK-47's for the first time in our lives. I even got to shoot the automatic, which was basically impossible to control. We took a long lunch and got casually drunk while Hok picked someone up at the airport. He came back and took me and John to go get massages. All I can say is that things got weird and thank God we were drunk. Hok then actually took us to his home, where we got to see his crocodile and pig farms in his backyard. I also managed to consume actual dog meat for the first, and probably last, time in my life. For the record, it pretty much tasted like chicken. That night we also went out to a strictly Cambodian place where we experienced a lot of local life. At a lot of Cambodian restaurants, there are benches at the entrance with normal cambodian girls that just chill and wait until they see guys that they want to hang out with. Then they come over and you buy them a drink and go from there. As the Australian hostel owner explained it to us, they're not at all 'working girls' but it apparently is an accepted part of their culture for normal girls to do this. So a couple girls came over to our table, one of whom spoke zero English and John managed to have a conversation entirely using the 2 Cambodian phrases we had learned up to that point: djull moi - 'cheers', and yum yum - 'tasty food.' It was hilarious to watch. I also had a strange first time experience in the men's bathroom. As I went to the urinal and started trying to pee, the male attendant in the bathroom came up and started rubbing my shoulders and asking me if I was enjoying Cambodia. I completely closed off urinarily and was pretty much petrified with the situation. I quickly told him Cambodia was great and got the hell out of there, although not without washing my hands first, obviously. Overall, it was probably the strangest, coolest, most unique day I've had while travelling in my entire life. One thing always led to another more ridiculous thing.
Anywho, the next day we were hungover as crap and just chilled in the hotel and uploaded pics to Facebook. We eventually made our way out to get some lunch and do a bit of shopping. We also went to one of the infamous 'Dr Fish Massages' where you put your bare feet in a fish tank and small fish peck away at the dry skin on your feet. I'll admit I was quite uncomfortable for the first minute or two. The next day we said our goodbyes to Hok and flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to meet up with John's girlfriend and her Gaelic football team from Bahrain.
Malaysia is a very modern country, with Kuala Lumpur (KL) being their huge commercial, financial, political, and cultural capital. It isn't exactly a tourist haven since the activities around KL are fairly limited, as far as adventure goes, but it is a great city to go out and have a good time. That's exactly what we did for the nights we were there. I also experienced my first Gaelic football match and even understood about 40% of what was going on. We managed to squeeze in a little touristy stuff, going to the Batu Caves, where the largest statue of the Hindu deity Murugan is. There were also monkeys there that attempted to steal pretty much anything that people were carrying, but focused on foodstuffs. I had to do some serious monkey dodging as they were ferocious and managed to take plenty from other people. We went to Chinatown and did some shopping, saw the Petronas Towers, made famous by the movie 'Entrapment,' and went to the Menara KL Tower to get a 360-degree rotating view of the city. One of our final nights there, the Gaelic football tournament had a huge Halloween party, where each team had 'G'-themed outfits. There were ghostbusters, gangsters, gods, goths, greeks, Gandolf the Grays, and of course, the Bahraini team's Groovy. Since neither John nor I were technically part of the team, we went with our own G's, a gardener and a geisha, respectfully. That night I also found that keeping up with Irish women drinking is a very painful experience, as evidenced by my complete and utter misery the next day, puking multiple times in my hotel room. Overall, KL was still a blast and I was glad I got to meet some cool people who lived in Bahrain that I could hang out with in the future. The day after the hangover, John and his girlfriend accompanied me to Kathmandu, Nepal.
We arrived in Kathmandu after seeing a host of Himalayan peaks on the way in, although I had no idea which one was Everest. The airport was pretty hectic, with hundreds of people offering us taxi rides and treks. We immediately made our way to the Lonely Planet-recommended town of Bhaktapur, a suburb of Kathmandu. Our little hotel had a beautiful view of the tallest Pagoda in Nepal and we dined on some traditional Nepali food in a cafe right next door. I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed the culinary experience, but I always attempt to try the food of the places I go, so now I can thankfully check off Nepal. We took a little walking tour around the city to check out all the little temples and shrines that dotted a lot of the street corners. A nice local man came up to us, took us into his little cafe and offered us some of his delicious rice wine, while simultaneously offering us his driving services the next day. He also claimed to be from the best 'caste' in Nepal, information that we all took with a grain of salt.
We beat the sunrise the next morning in order to get some good shots around town. It was there that I discovered that Nepali's suffer from the same phlegm issues as the Vietnamese, as we were greeted simultaneously by the sunrise and by a local guy hawking up phlegm at what can only be described as a 'violent pace.' Afterwards, a young owner of an art studio came up and invited us into the studio to take a look at some traditional paintings. The studio was actually a school for young artists, taught by exiled Tibetan monks. They managed to hand-paint amazing mandalas, which are circular in nature and tell various stories of the universe. The owner also showed us impressive sand paintings which are done by piecing individual grains of sand together in a pattern. The one on display had taken months.
After we bought some paintings, we hopped in a taxi that drove us way outside the city up wandering dirt roads to the mountainy village of Nagarkot. From our hostel, we managed to get an absolutely fabulous view of the Himalayan range. Tragically, we couldn't pick out which peak was Everest, but to be fair, I think another peak was blocking our view. The beauty of seeing the mountains that close was pretty awesome, and after we took a guided trek up to this even more beautiful viewing area, we knew we were someplace special. The sunsets that evening and the subsequent sunrise in the morning confirmed what we were all feeling; Nepal was an absolutely gorgeous country.
From Nagarkot, we headed back down to Kathmandu at the bottom of the Kathmandu Valley. After experiencing the amazingly clean and crisp mountain air and peace, Kathmandu again seemed like a crazy polluted cluster-fuck of poverty. We headed into the tourist ghetto of Kathmandu, called Thamel, where we found literally an unlimited number of outfitter shops and tour companies. Every corner was filled with North Face gear, some real, some fake. It was definitely another sensory overload, with travelers from all over the world roaming about block after block after block looking for the newest and best stuff. Where there wasn't an outfitter's shop, there was a restaurant that catered to the western crowd. After aimlessly wandering about, we headed over to the Durbar Square, which houses palaces and temples from the four different kingdoms that would eventually combine and form modern Nepal. The temples were quite beautiful as our guide explained the various histories behind the 'Erotic Temple' and the 'Hippie Temple.' The erotic one was particularly interesting merely because each of its supporting pillars had a different sex position chiseled into it, not unlike old Kama Sutra sculptures. We were naturally thoroughly entertained. Our final evening together was quiet, like most of our nightlife in Nepal, with some wine and food at the hostel.
The next morning we headed out to the Bhote Koshi river valley, where we were to take on the highest bungee jump in Nepal, located at the Last Resort. The jump itself is from a steel walking bridge that darts across the valley, more than 500 feet above the river below. We each decided to go for both the bungee jump and the canyon swing. I'd experienced similar stuff in Switzerland a few years ago, but this was higher, and for some reason the bridge made it scarier. My knees were definitely shaking as I crept to the edge, but jumped as directed and it was every bit as much fun as I remember it. My buddy John had the most picturesque jump, with a lot of horizontal distance off the platform followed by a tuck of the upper torso into a perfect plunge. Olympic divers couldn't have done it better. The canyon swing was cool as well, with a lot more free-fall than bungee, followed by a tension in your bungee and a swooping forward motion, as you're swung forward from an additional cable, pendulum-style. In my mind, it was the perfect ending for the trip. The drive back to Kathmandu was as scenic as one could imagine, despite the police checkpoints (we were getting close to Tibet) and the constant reminder of the poor driving conditions. Overall, Nepal was a fabulously beautiful country, with really nice people. I was definitely more aware of the rampant poverty, but I can see signs of development. Slow, but still there.
The trip was a fantastic experience, with multiple world famous sites and places now off my checklist. It definitely rejuvenated me as I headed back to the Kingdom for my last hitch of the year.
Coming back to Saudi, I found out that I would no longer be working up north in Manifa, but would be staying down south, as I had officially transferred to our other location, the more desert-bound base of Udhailiyah. I learned how to successfully install our fiber optic cables into coiled tubing and then I shipped out to the small Bedouin (and might I add, toilet paper-free) town of Khurais, about an hour outside of Riyadh. There, I experienced a couple sleepless nights finishing up a job that another specialist had started. But we made it back to Udhailiyah before heading out to nearby Shedgum for what we in the oilfield call, 'water shut-offs.' In these jobs, we basically isolate zones downhole that we think are producing water (water = bad, oil = good). We do that by putting a big tool downhole that inflates and literally blocks the flow of the entire wellbore. Throw in some cement through the coiled tubing, and you've got a water shut-off. The jobs didn't go 100% as planned, which I've found is the new normal in the field, and I had my share of mistakes, but I definitely learned a crap-ton about what it takes to be an even better specialist.
Lucky for me, I was able to take a shorter hitch and got to head back home right in time for Christmas. Landed in San Fran on Xmas eve and was able to share a couple days with just my brother, my folks, and of course, my dog. We then all flew to Chicago for a great big Magoo family post-Christmas get together. It was awesome seeing most of my cousins again, and we even found out that one of my cousins got engaged to her Italian boyfriend! This of course means another family wedding, which are always awesome. I also caught up on all the good movies that were out, including Skyfall, Les Mis, Django, Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln, and Argo. All of them were pretty awesome, with Zero Dark Thirty and Argo being my personal two favorites. I spent New Years at an organized party with a bunch of the old fratters, which was pretty awesome and ended up being an epically late night.
So that was most of 2012 in a nutshell. I saw a lot of awesome places and met a lot of awesome people. I've become pretty comfortable here in Saudi: a little more accepting of its shortcomings and a little more aware of its positives as well. 2013 is shaping up pretty well so far, as I took an absolutely amazing trip to Peru, which I'll try to document in a future post. I'll have a couple weddings to go to this summer and I think I'll end up spending some more time in Oceania, because I've gotta go see about a girl.
Peace out from Magoo....for now!
I met up with my friend Nut in Bangkok, who had actually gone to OFS-1 with me way back in November 2010. She helped show me around Bangkok a little bit and also referred me to her best friend, Queen, who was living in Phuket and running tours down there. Thailand is a pretty ridiculous place in general. Anyone who has heard stories about Thailand...well, they're probably true. That's all I'm going to say about that on the record. So after checking out a couple of the highlights in Bangkok, I zipped down for a couple days in Phuket. Phuket is a small island on the southwest coast of Thailand and it was just as touristy as I had expected. Luckily, Queen took me around to all the fun stuff that could be had: Ladyboy Cabaret Show, Ping Pong Show, and of course to see the Big Buddha in Phuket. I spent a little time relaxing at the beach as well.
After Phuket, I flew back to Bangkok and met up with my buddy John who works in Saudi with me. It was awesome because we'd been trying to travel together for a while and hadn't really had the opportunity. We were only together for a night, but we caught up with each other and had a blast. Afterwards, I flew to Singapore to meet up with my friend Chelsea, who had been working there for a couple months. Singapore was certainly less 'crazy' than Bangkok, but was much more cosmopolitan and urban. A lot of expats were everywhere and it certainly seemed like a place where one could live a normal life.
At week's end, I found myself flying back to the US to start my Technical School, which is the final large training session for field engineers in my segment. I ran into a couple of my old friends from the first school last year and made some new friends as well.
April:
I spent all of April in Technical School, which was thankfully less stressful than Operational School. I learned all about the reservoirs, their properties, and how to stimulate different formations. I finally went to a legitimate foot doctor and orthopedic specialist and got my ankle properly diagnosed. 2 sprained ligaments. Gross, especially since the doctor in Saudi only thought I had one. I went to physical therapy and got some exercises to do every day. I got really into P90-X as a workout regimen, which showed pretty good results. I went rock climbing with some of the guys and dabbled with bicycling again. I also took a quick trip up to Michigan to go to my brother's wedding shower, which was a lovely occasion to meet my new in-laws. I even found out my sister was pregnant! More on that later.
May:
Lucky for me, I passed the Technical School and flew directly to Las Vegas for my older brother's bachelor party. Unfortunately I can't divulge any individual names or stories, but I can tell you most of us won big, spent big, drank big, and survived....barely. This is the only photo that survived.
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| Yes, that's my brother as the pit boss |
After I survived the bachelor party, I hung out in San Francisco for a week to re-charge the batteries a little bit. I explored a little more of the downtown area with my family, which was actually pretty fun. Saw Alcatraz, finally saw the Golden Gate. I also managed to get my Russian visa, which would be necessary for my July trip to Russia. In the meantime though, I met up with a couple of my friends and we pulled off a weekend climb of Mount Shasta, which at 14,179 ft is one of the tallest mountains in the continental US. It is a beautiful snow-covered mountain with a huge gulch that people generally trek up. We started climbing on Saturday morning, reached about 10,000 ft around noon time, passed out hard and started the next morning at 5am for the summit. We made it there at about 10am, and some of us then skied, snowboarded, or in my case, glissaded down the 4000ft between the summit and our camp. Glissading is basically sliding down on your ass. It was awesome. One of my friends also 'forgot' to wear her sunglasses during the final day and suffered corneal burns. Pretty crazy. Either way, I had to play nurse for a couple days and she flew back to Madison as I was flying back to Saudi.
June:
Once I got back to Saudi, I was finally healthy and ready for the field again. Tragically I'd pretty much forgotten all of the ACTive stuff I had learned so I had to get re-trained. Lucky for me, two of our senior specialists took me on a job that covered a wide variety of our tools and I was able to get back in the swing of things. We had some rough days troubleshooting, as is the norm with ACTive, but I was well on my way to breaking out as a stand-alone specialist.
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| Our ACTive cabin. Perfect for napping |
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| Me and the longest coiled tubing string in the world |
July:
Ok, so technically I was back in the US on June 27th, but who's counting. Either way, I took a 16-day field break and made it back to Chicago for my brother's wedding. It was an absolutely excellent weekend. My younger brother and I made co-Best Man speeches and if i do say so, we killed it. I got to catch up with a lot of my cousins and family friends who I hadn't seen in a long time. My brother and his fiance had been dating for 5 years before finally getting engaged last summer and the wedding was the culmination of their courtship. The wedding was also an ample opportunity to suck down as much alcohol as possible. Naturally, that didn't sit too well with my Saudi tolerance and literally moments after I finished my Best Man speech, I felt horribly sick. Might've been the butterflies in my stomach finally getting out, but I'll go ahead and blame the excessive white wine consumption. Either way, it was a non-triumphant ending to the wedding, which itself was quite triumphant.
The next day I flew out to Russia to meet up with my friends for the start of our next big adventure. I landed in Moscow and met up with my friend Mahi, and we made our way from Sheremetyevo Airport to our hotel in Moscow. We also met up with Nikolai, who was our Russian contact who organized the trip, and one of our other fellow climbers, Jamie. We explored Moscow with a nice local tour guide, which included trips to Red Square, the Kremlin, and St Basil's Cathedral. It was really cool to see stuff I'd only ever really seen in the movies and in pictures.
The next day we flew down to Mineralne Vody (literally 'mineral water'), which was the closest city to Mount Elbrus, which stands at 18,510 ft and is therefore the tallest mountain in Europe. I understand some might argue Russia isn't Europe, but considering the highest peak on the more traditional European continent which excludes Russia and Turkey is Mount Blanc at a mere 15,782 ft, I'll take Elbrus as the highest. We slowly migrated up the mountain, hiking to certain elevations and then coming down and sleeping lower. Then we'd move up to the next 'accommodation' up the mountain the next day (althuogh at lower altitudes than we climbed the previous day, so we never cheated). We got to the snow level on day 2, and didn't look back from there. The last day was naturally the most treacherous, as we started at 2am and climbed for about 6.5 hours until we got to the summit. Our guide was very pleased with our group, as we were all pretty strong climbers and really only took 3 breaks during those 6.5 hours. We had a couple close calls with frostbite and altitude sickness, but overall I thought we did pretty awesome. Only downside was that Mahi naturally missed filming my 'Drago!!' yelling at the summit. We then started descending and finally got back to our hotel next to the mountain the next afternoon. That evening we had a pretty epic dance party in the basement bar of the hotel which included a comical amount of flaming shots. Next morning began with me waking up a half hour late for a cab that was supposed to take me and Mahi to the airport 3 hours away for a flight that was leaving in 2 hours. The next hour and a half was easily the most terrified I've ever been in a moving vehicle. These two very Russian guys were chain-ripping cigs and bumping this psycho Russian techno music while driving through these mountain passes at no less than 100mph. Add to the fact that I was still comically drunk from the night before, and you get one of my most memorable adventures to date. Luckily, they actually managed to convince the Russian cops that stopped us that they needed to drive that fast in order to get us to the airport, and when the cops looked at me and simply asked 'Elbrus?', I responded with 'da' and they left us alone ('da' is yes in Russian). Needless to say, we barely made the airport and barely made the flight to St Petersburg, but we DID make it.
St Petersburg was an absolutely amazing city. Moscow had a very 'Soviet' feel to it, but Saint Petersburg was quite the opposite. It was very reminiscent of the pre-Soviet days in Russia, when the czars ruled and Russian culture thrived. The architecture was beautiful, there were many more parks all over the city, and it had a much more cosmopolitan feel than dreary old Moscow. I was able to use some of my credit card points to score a free night at a really nice hotel downtown, which allowed us to enjoy their rooftop bar and experience St Pete's utter lack of nighttime. Because it is so far north (59 degrees, further north than Juneau, Alaska), the sun only really 'sets' for like an hour each night. There was a decent twilight from midnight until about 2am, when it got 'dark' for an hour and then the sunrise started at 3 and went right back to a normal day. That day we checked out Peterhof, which is a giant estate and chateau in the Parisian style developed by Peter the Great in the early 18th century. It was spectacularly beautiful and intricate.
After St Pete's, we flew back to Moscow, where Mahi then headed back to the US and I was off to the Kingdom. Upon my return, I was sent directly north to Manifa to run ACTive jobs alone, since all of our other specialists were out of the country. Definitely had to learn a lot more about the tools and procedures, but we ran a couple jobs without any major issues. I was once again reminded of how difficult working during Ramadan is, as everything is about 20% as efficient as it normally would be. Additionally, food and water are scant during the day, although the Filipino guys did manage to cook some shrimp and we had a couple nice meals together as the only non-fasters on location.
August:
Ramadan continued and so did Manifa. I tried to manage a couple new responsibilities involved with the ACTive team, when we all learned that our presumed Engineer In Charge actually quit SLB and opted for other ventures back home. It threw a huge wrench into the ACTive cell's plans and we ended up being pretty bare as far as experienced specialists goes, so I had to try to learn a lot quickly to maintain the levels of service quality that we had set for ourselves. I also spent a lot of time in Udhailiyah during the Eid celebration since no jobs were going on. The culture difference between Udhailiyah and Al Khobar became pretty evident as well. The units are much cleaner, the roles and responsibilities of supervisors versus engineers is much clearer, and the camaraderie among engineers was also stronger. It helps that everyone eats breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, so socializing is much easier and a lot less of a hassle, whereas Khobar is kind of 'every man for himself' and that really turned me off. The month ended with me heading back to Manifa to run a couple more jobs.
September:
The next day we flew down to Mineralne Vody (literally 'mineral water'), which was the closest city to Mount Elbrus, which stands at 18,510 ft and is therefore the tallest mountain in Europe. I understand some might argue Russia isn't Europe, but considering the highest peak on the more traditional European continent which excludes Russia and Turkey is Mount Blanc at a mere 15,782 ft, I'll take Elbrus as the highest. We slowly migrated up the mountain, hiking to certain elevations and then coming down and sleeping lower. Then we'd move up to the next 'accommodation' up the mountain the next day (althuogh at lower altitudes than we climbed the previous day, so we never cheated). We got to the snow level on day 2, and didn't look back from there. The last day was naturally the most treacherous, as we started at 2am and climbed for about 6.5 hours until we got to the summit. Our guide was very pleased with our group, as we were all pretty strong climbers and really only took 3 breaks during those 6.5 hours. We had a couple close calls with frostbite and altitude sickness, but overall I thought we did pretty awesome. Only downside was that Mahi naturally missed filming my 'Drago!!' yelling at the summit. We then started descending and finally got back to our hotel next to the mountain the next afternoon. That evening we had a pretty epic dance party in the basement bar of the hotel which included a comical amount of flaming shots. Next morning began with me waking up a half hour late for a cab that was supposed to take me and Mahi to the airport 3 hours away for a flight that was leaving in 2 hours. The next hour and a half was easily the most terrified I've ever been in a moving vehicle. These two very Russian guys were chain-ripping cigs and bumping this psycho Russian techno music while driving through these mountain passes at no less than 100mph. Add to the fact that I was still comically drunk from the night before, and you get one of my most memorable adventures to date. Luckily, they actually managed to convince the Russian cops that stopped us that they needed to drive that fast in order to get us to the airport, and when the cops looked at me and simply asked 'Elbrus?', I responded with 'da' and they left us alone ('da' is yes in Russian). Needless to say, we barely made the airport and barely made the flight to St Petersburg, but we DID make it.
St Petersburg was an absolutely amazing city. Moscow had a very 'Soviet' feel to it, but Saint Petersburg was quite the opposite. It was very reminiscent of the pre-Soviet days in Russia, when the czars ruled and Russian culture thrived. The architecture was beautiful, there were many more parks all over the city, and it had a much more cosmopolitan feel than dreary old Moscow. I was able to use some of my credit card points to score a free night at a really nice hotel downtown, which allowed us to enjoy their rooftop bar and experience St Pete's utter lack of nighttime. Because it is so far north (59 degrees, further north than Juneau, Alaska), the sun only really 'sets' for like an hour each night. There was a decent twilight from midnight until about 2am, when it got 'dark' for an hour and then the sunrise started at 3 and went right back to a normal day. That day we checked out Peterhof, which is a giant estate and chateau in the Parisian style developed by Peter the Great in the early 18th century. It was spectacularly beautiful and intricate.
After St Pete's, we flew back to Moscow, where Mahi then headed back to the US and I was off to the Kingdom. Upon my return, I was sent directly north to Manifa to run ACTive jobs alone, since all of our other specialists were out of the country. Definitely had to learn a lot more about the tools and procedures, but we ran a couple jobs without any major issues. I was once again reminded of how difficult working during Ramadan is, as everything is about 20% as efficient as it normally would be. Additionally, food and water are scant during the day, although the Filipino guys did manage to cook some shrimp and we had a couple nice meals together as the only non-fasters on location.
August:
Ramadan continued and so did Manifa. I tried to manage a couple new responsibilities involved with the ACTive team, when we all learned that our presumed Engineer In Charge actually quit SLB and opted for other ventures back home. It threw a huge wrench into the ACTive cell's plans and we ended up being pretty bare as far as experienced specialists goes, so I had to try to learn a lot quickly to maintain the levels of service quality that we had set for ourselves. I also spent a lot of time in Udhailiyah during the Eid celebration since no jobs were going on. The culture difference between Udhailiyah and Al Khobar became pretty evident as well. The units are much cleaner, the roles and responsibilities of supervisors versus engineers is much clearer, and the camaraderie among engineers was also stronger. It helps that everyone eats breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, so socializing is much easier and a lot less of a hassle, whereas Khobar is kind of 'every man for himself' and that really turned me off. The month ended with me heading back to Manifa to run a couple more jobs.
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| First ever blowout. Crappy |
Started off in Manifa. Got crazy busy as I was trying to support two other operations going on. One guy had just come back from an extended days off and may have forgotten a thing or two about some of our tools and whatnot, so I caught him up while trying to get my own operation done. It was pretty stressful, especially since the client's demands really picked up once Ramadan was finished. Luckily we got our jobs done without any issues from the ACTive side. We even managed to set a world record at one of the wells. We did the deepest open hole coiled tubing intervention in the world at 30250 ft. It was pretty cool as Aramco was pleased that we could get that deep and bought us a nice dinner of rice and chicken and lamb.
As the month came to a close, I headed to Abu Dhabi for a one-week class that taught some of our different ACTive technologies that I had luckily just been exposed to on the job.I found out there that my buddy John, who I had been planning to travel with in October, had a huge project that he couldn't pass up, so he would have to cancel the vacation. This really sucked so I cancelled flights I had to Vietnam and Nepal. Despite that, I still managed to met some more cool kids from all around the world in the class, including a young girl from Saudi who was working in the Emirates. I was really excited that I got to talk to her a little bit about life in Saudi as a woman, and she expounded on some of her beliefs, which were tremendously liberal by Saudi standards. I heartily enjoyed the experienced.
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| Yup, that's who you think it is |
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| After our world record coiled tubing intervention |
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| Loving ACTive |
I flew back from Abu Dhabi directly to Houston, TX where I submitted my documents to get my next Saudi visa. I also found out when I got to Houston that John's project had been cancelled, so our vacation was back on! I immediately re-booked as many flights as I could and was generally pumped. I celebrated by attending my buddy's brisket roast in Houston. I also attempted to get my skydiving certification in an aggressive and expensive program at Skydive Spaceland where you pay about 2 grand and you try to get 25 jumps completed in a week. I did the 'jump school' on that first Sunday in Houston and I found out that the place was super booked for the first two days. This was slightly disappointing, but they had a big promotion because Felix Baumgartner was supposed to attempt his supersonic skydive from space. Therefore Red Bull was coming to Skydive Spaceland to do 100 tandems in a day. So needless to say, the planes were pretty well booked. This set me back, considering I had already booked my flight on Friday out of Houston, so my timeframe was extremely limited. I found out the next couple days during the jumps the first rule of skydiving: weather is everything. There would be too many clouds, too low of clouds, too much wind, too much wind changes and even a little bit of rain. All of these scenarios prevent loads from going up. I also realized that I really wasnt enjoying it as much as when I was younger. I still really have no explanation, but I could never get to the level of relaxation during free-fall that is necessary to maintain good posture and control while falling. I still loved being under canopy (parachute) when I could navigate and around and play with the chute and eventually find the landing area and do my best to hit the target. I think I'll always love that, but watching myself on video during freefall I was pretty much just a piece of plywood, never establishing a good 'arch' of the body that is necessary for control of aerial maneuvers. So at the end of the day I only got 8 jumps done in 4 days and told my instructor that I wouldn't be continuing the program. (1) I was basically out of time. Weather and crowds had severely hindered the intended efficiency of the program I signed up for, but (2) I just wasn't loving it anymore. That really sucked because I thought I'd been looking forward to it for some time. We'll see what happens later because I still have like 15 jumps paid for, so whenever I'm back in Houston, I might as well see if I can fall in love with it again. Either way, I grabbed my visa on Friday and flew up to Chicago to see my fam and friends.
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| Brisket! |
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| If you have this happen, act quickly! |
I landed in Hanoi, Vietnam the next day and waited around for John to arrive by getting a lovely Vietnamese lunch and a foot massage at the airport. We then headed to our hotel in Hanoi and took a much needed 7 hour nap. It was very poor execution on our part, so we just ended up walking around at about 10pm just in the immediate area around the hotel. The Vietnamese were pretty nice to us, as obvious westerners, and we didn't exactly see too many other 'white' folk around. The street-side vietnamese food was pretty good, but John and I grabbed some beer, passed out early, and woke up and watched the Tigers-Yankees playoff game as we packed up our stuff. It was nice that our hotel had ESPN and the game ended up being a part of the Tigers sweep of the Yanks. From Hanoi, we hopped on a bus to Haiphong, which is right by the coast. We hopped on another bus there which took us to the port outside the island of Cat Ba. We hopped on a boat to get to the far side of the island, where we then were taken by bus to downtown Cat Ba. Cat Ba is a large island off the east coast of Vietnam, close to the world famous Ha Long Bay, and our principal goal of being there was rock climbing, which we had read about. We booked a couple full-day adventures which took us kayaking all around the hundreds of islands surrounding Cat Ba. We did some outdoor rock climbing one island, where I realized that I can physically climb, but my form is somewhat of a work in progress. The next day we went deep-water solo-ing, which was the highlight of 'nam for me. A lot of these islands are just limestone towers that stick out of the shallow waters around Cat Ba. Therefore, they act as giant rock walls with the water being your cushion in case you fall. John got higher than any of the guides had seen, whereas I naturally struggled, but thoroughly enjoyed myself. The next day we slept in a bit and road motorbikes around the island. We took a little look inside Cat Ba National Park, but it wasn't anything tremendously memorable. We had a nice night drinking with our climbing guides and a few other foreigners, before heading back to Hanoi for an evening flight to Cambodia.
Up next was Siem Reap, Cambodia, the site of the legendary Angkor Wat. Cambodia was also the sight of one of the largest genocides in modern history during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. The regime sought to restore the country to an 11th-century style economic and social structure, with minimal western influences and a primarily agrarian society. Unfortunately, it also led to the deaths of over 1 million Cambodians (out of a population of 8 million) in what were later referred to as 'The Killing Fields.' Fortunately, the regime didn't last too long and since the country was fully reunited in 1993, it has blossomed and Siem Reap has become the tourist hub, with its close proximity to the Wat.
John and I met a nice tuk tuk driver at the airport, who ended up showing us around for the next couple days. We also stayed at a nice hostel just a touch outside the main strip in Siem Reap that was run by an awesome Australian guy in his 50s. The next day, our driver Hok, took us to the world-famous Angkor Wat, which is the largest Hindu temple complex in the world. It was awesome to finally see in person. It was once the centerpiece of the Khmer Empire, whose capital was at one point the most populous city in the world. It was amazingly intact, considering it was built in the 12th century, and its size was quite impressive. We drove around to a couple of the other temples around the area including Bayon, which had 240-some enormous faces carved into the stone.
The next day we took off to another temple way far away and then went to the Cambodian Landmine Museum, which offered a sobering prospective on daily life in rural Cambodia. There's still millions of landmines in Cambodia and people rarely die from them, but they are permanently handicapped and disfigured. Afterwards, John and I went to a Cambodian military base and fired off some AK-47's for the first time in our lives. I even got to shoot the automatic, which was basically impossible to control. We took a long lunch and got casually drunk while Hok picked someone up at the airport. He came back and took me and John to go get massages. All I can say is that things got weird and thank God we were drunk. Hok then actually took us to his home, where we got to see his crocodile and pig farms in his backyard. I also managed to consume actual dog meat for the first, and probably last, time in my life. For the record, it pretty much tasted like chicken. That night we also went out to a strictly Cambodian place where we experienced a lot of local life. At a lot of Cambodian restaurants, there are benches at the entrance with normal cambodian girls that just chill and wait until they see guys that they want to hang out with. Then they come over and you buy them a drink and go from there. As the Australian hostel owner explained it to us, they're not at all 'working girls' but it apparently is an accepted part of their culture for normal girls to do this. So a couple girls came over to our table, one of whom spoke zero English and John managed to have a conversation entirely using the 2 Cambodian phrases we had learned up to that point: djull moi - 'cheers', and yum yum - 'tasty food.' It was hilarious to watch. I also had a strange first time experience in the men's bathroom. As I went to the urinal and started trying to pee, the male attendant in the bathroom came up and started rubbing my shoulders and asking me if I was enjoying Cambodia. I completely closed off urinarily and was pretty much petrified with the situation. I quickly told him Cambodia was great and got the hell out of there, although not without washing my hands first, obviously. Overall, it was probably the strangest, coolest, most unique day I've had while travelling in my entire life. One thing always led to another more ridiculous thing.
Anywho, the next day we were hungover as crap and just chilled in the hotel and uploaded pics to Facebook. We eventually made our way out to get some lunch and do a bit of shopping. We also went to one of the infamous 'Dr Fish Massages' where you put your bare feet in a fish tank and small fish peck away at the dry skin on your feet. I'll admit I was quite uncomfortable for the first minute or two. The next day we said our goodbyes to Hok and flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to meet up with John's girlfriend and her Gaelic football team from Bahrain.
Malaysia is a very modern country, with Kuala Lumpur (KL) being their huge commercial, financial, political, and cultural capital. It isn't exactly a tourist haven since the activities around KL are fairly limited, as far as adventure goes, but it is a great city to go out and have a good time. That's exactly what we did for the nights we were there. I also experienced my first Gaelic football match and even understood about 40% of what was going on. We managed to squeeze in a little touristy stuff, going to the Batu Caves, where the largest statue of the Hindu deity Murugan is. There were also monkeys there that attempted to steal pretty much anything that people were carrying, but focused on foodstuffs. I had to do some serious monkey dodging as they were ferocious and managed to take plenty from other people. We went to Chinatown and did some shopping, saw the Petronas Towers, made famous by the movie 'Entrapment,' and went to the Menara KL Tower to get a 360-degree rotating view of the city. One of our final nights there, the Gaelic football tournament had a huge Halloween party, where each team had 'G'-themed outfits. There were ghostbusters, gangsters, gods, goths, greeks, Gandolf the Grays, and of course, the Bahraini team's Groovy. Since neither John nor I were technically part of the team, we went with our own G's, a gardener and a geisha, respectfully. That night I also found that keeping up with Irish women drinking is a very painful experience, as evidenced by my complete and utter misery the next day, puking multiple times in my hotel room. Overall, KL was still a blast and I was glad I got to meet some cool people who lived in Bahrain that I could hang out with in the future. The day after the hangover, John and his girlfriend accompanied me to Kathmandu, Nepal.
We arrived in Kathmandu after seeing a host of Himalayan peaks on the way in, although I had no idea which one was Everest. The airport was pretty hectic, with hundreds of people offering us taxi rides and treks. We immediately made our way to the Lonely Planet-recommended town of Bhaktapur, a suburb of Kathmandu. Our little hotel had a beautiful view of the tallest Pagoda in Nepal and we dined on some traditional Nepali food in a cafe right next door. I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed the culinary experience, but I always attempt to try the food of the places I go, so now I can thankfully check off Nepal. We took a little walking tour around the city to check out all the little temples and shrines that dotted a lot of the street corners. A nice local man came up to us, took us into his little cafe and offered us some of his delicious rice wine, while simultaneously offering us his driving services the next day. He also claimed to be from the best 'caste' in Nepal, information that we all took with a grain of salt.
We beat the sunrise the next morning in order to get some good shots around town. It was there that I discovered that Nepali's suffer from the same phlegm issues as the Vietnamese, as we were greeted simultaneously by the sunrise and by a local guy hawking up phlegm at what can only be described as a 'violent pace.' Afterwards, a young owner of an art studio came up and invited us into the studio to take a look at some traditional paintings. The studio was actually a school for young artists, taught by exiled Tibetan monks. They managed to hand-paint amazing mandalas, which are circular in nature and tell various stories of the universe. The owner also showed us impressive sand paintings which are done by piecing individual grains of sand together in a pattern. The one on display had taken months.
From Nagarkot, we headed back down to Kathmandu at the bottom of the Kathmandu Valley. After experiencing the amazingly clean and crisp mountain air and peace, Kathmandu again seemed like a crazy polluted cluster-fuck of poverty. We headed into the tourist ghetto of Kathmandu, called Thamel, where we found literally an unlimited number of outfitter shops and tour companies. Every corner was filled with North Face gear, some real, some fake. It was definitely another sensory overload, with travelers from all over the world roaming about block after block after block looking for the newest and best stuff. Where there wasn't an outfitter's shop, there was a restaurant that catered to the western crowd. After aimlessly wandering about, we headed over to the Durbar Square, which houses palaces and temples from the four different kingdoms that would eventually combine and form modern Nepal. The temples were quite beautiful as our guide explained the various histories behind the 'Erotic Temple' and the 'Hippie Temple.' The erotic one was particularly interesting merely because each of its supporting pillars had a different sex position chiseled into it, not unlike old Kama Sutra sculptures. We were naturally thoroughly entertained. Our final evening together was quiet, like most of our nightlife in Nepal, with some wine and food at the hostel.
The next morning we headed out to the Bhote Koshi river valley, where we were to take on the highest bungee jump in Nepal, located at the Last Resort. The jump itself is from a steel walking bridge that darts across the valley, more than 500 feet above the river below. We each decided to go for both the bungee jump and the canyon swing. I'd experienced similar stuff in Switzerland a few years ago, but this was higher, and for some reason the bridge made it scarier. My knees were definitely shaking as I crept to the edge, but jumped as directed and it was every bit as much fun as I remember it. My buddy John had the most picturesque jump, with a lot of horizontal distance off the platform followed by a tuck of the upper torso into a perfect plunge. Olympic divers couldn't have done it better. The canyon swing was cool as well, with a lot more free-fall than bungee, followed by a tension in your bungee and a swooping forward motion, as you're swung forward from an additional cable, pendulum-style. In my mind, it was the perfect ending for the trip. The drive back to Kathmandu was as scenic as one could imagine, despite the police checkpoints (we were getting close to Tibet) and the constant reminder of the poor driving conditions. Overall, Nepal was a fabulously beautiful country, with really nice people. I was definitely more aware of the rampant poverty, but I can see signs of development. Slow, but still there.
The trip was a fantastic experience, with multiple world famous sites and places now off my checklist. It definitely rejuvenated me as I headed back to the Kingdom for my last hitch of the year.
Coming back to Saudi, I found out that I would no longer be working up north in Manifa, but would be staying down south, as I had officially transferred to our other location, the more desert-bound base of Udhailiyah. I learned how to successfully install our fiber optic cables into coiled tubing and then I shipped out to the small Bedouin (and might I add, toilet paper-free) town of Khurais, about an hour outside of Riyadh. There, I experienced a couple sleepless nights finishing up a job that another specialist had started. But we made it back to Udhailiyah before heading out to nearby Shedgum for what we in the oilfield call, 'water shut-offs.' In these jobs, we basically isolate zones downhole that we think are producing water (water = bad, oil = good). We do that by putting a big tool downhole that inflates and literally blocks the flow of the entire wellbore. Throw in some cement through the coiled tubing, and you've got a water shut-off. The jobs didn't go 100% as planned, which I've found is the new normal in the field, and I had my share of mistakes, but I definitely learned a crap-ton about what it takes to be an even better specialist.
Lucky for me, I was able to take a shorter hitch and got to head back home right in time for Christmas. Landed in San Fran on Xmas eve and was able to share a couple days with just my brother, my folks, and of course, my dog. We then all flew to Chicago for a great big Magoo family post-Christmas get together. It was awesome seeing most of my cousins again, and we even found out that one of my cousins got engaged to her Italian boyfriend! This of course means another family wedding, which are always awesome. I also caught up on all the good movies that were out, including Skyfall, Les Mis, Django, Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln, and Argo. All of them were pretty awesome, with Zero Dark Thirty and Argo being my personal two favorites. I spent New Years at an organized party with a bunch of the old fratters, which was pretty awesome and ended up being an epically late night.
So that was most of 2012 in a nutshell. I saw a lot of awesome places and met a lot of awesome people. I've become pretty comfortable here in Saudi: a little more accepting of its shortcomings and a little more aware of its positives as well. 2013 is shaping up pretty well so far, as I took an absolutely amazing trip to Peru, which I'll try to document in a future post. I'll have a couple weddings to go to this summer and I think I'll end up spending some more time in Oceania, because I've gotta go see about a girl.
Peace out from Magoo....for now!
