So let me finish filling you in on last week.
On Sunday I caught a lift in with the visitors from Rijswijk, so I wouldn't have to cope with Ferret's driving again. After having done the necessary operations emails etc, I had a word with Mohanned about Ferret, basically firing him.
Well, I do feel I have given him more than a second chance and he didn't take it...and there are others out there who need the job just as much.
Next, my landlord came into the office to sign the contract (finally!) and the estate agent was there too. Small problem: the contract lawyer had had an argument with the lady who organises the signature and paperwork, and he had unapproved my contract for reasons unknown to everyone else.
So I had to get the Life Support chap, Andre, who got Ben-the-finance-manager to approve it so that the meeting could go ahead and the contract be signed.
In the middle of this drama, as I headed back to my desk to check where my next meeting was, I ran into the Ferret who started begging me to keep him. I could have done without that quite frankly, it felt really awful.
As I headed back to my desk my phone was ringing and it was a man from NOC (the National Oil Company) wondering why we weren't drilling anymore.
aaaaaaaaaa! stressometer exploding!!
Anyway, shortly after that Choochoo and I went to meet Ian, the second in command of Gas&Power, which is the part of our company that deals with gas plants, pipelines etc etc. Had an interesting chat with him about what they are up to: basically, waiting for us to finish drilling this well and find something!
I am starting to realise that this is not just a HPHT (High Pressure High Temperature) well in the literal sense...everyone seems to have so many expectations of it, and people seem to have talked themselves into an excited frenzy about it...let's just hope we can deliver something!
I will do a separate work post, but for now, I'll just run through the rest of the week quickly:
Sunday night we just stayed at the LCM, catching up and attempting to play pool.
Monday night I had to go for the second panto rehearsal, but managed to leave quite early so we had a bit of an evening.
Tuesday night, Jimmy invited us along with Mohammed and Uwe to dinner, which was very nice. We met his two little boys and had a quick look around their nice house, which is right next to Sundar's and near a few other work people's too. Anne (Jimmy's wife) had cooked some really nice curries - I musn't forget to get those recipes from her some time soon, as they were really tasty and I have no idea how to make a proper curry.
Here are a few pictures of the evening:
Relaxing on the patio... ...near Jimmy's collection of petrified wood
Mohammed, an Omani friend from Rijswijk... ...Matthew and Uwe waiting hungrily
Our hosts for the night, Anne and JimmyAll-in-all we had a lovely time relaxing on their terrace and enjoying the perfect evening...not even getting bitten by mozzies!
Wednesday was Happy Hour at Marc & Kathryn's. Every month someone from the company's expat community organises this at their home, as a social for staff and their families. It was a great way to meet the spouses and families of people I work with and for Matthew to meet lots of people too. M & K have a lovely house, definitely fitting for a General Manager.
I definitely want to volunteer to host a Happy Hour but it'll have to wait till the house is fully in order...'tis but a gleam in my mind's eye currently!!
All too soon it was Thursday and time for Matthew to fly home after almost a week of working from 'LCM home' and enjoying the facilities here. My new driver ( :-) ) Mousab took him to the airport, dropping by the office on the way to say goodbye.
Thursday night I was feeling completely exhausted so stayed chatting to Amgad until he left for his flight home to Egypt, then curled up with a James Bond DVD and slept till 1pm the next day.
So you can see that we were pretty busy last week and as I don't want to blog on work time, I was a bit stuck on that front.
In other notes, I have been going around taking pictures of plants I would like for my garden. I had a good chat last week with Barry-the-Petrophysicist as he is a keen gardener, and I have taken lots of pics of plants here at the LCM (dotted around this post). Some I have yet to identify, but I suspect it'll be more a question of recognising the plant at the nursery than actually finding a name for it anyway. If anyone recognises them though, please give us a shout!
So, as a summary of the week: Matthew was 'ere, house contract signed, driver changed, work progressing. Florence = happy.
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