Still alive!

Just had 8 days of internet and phone downtime. Crazy place.

Sabratha

I can't believe this was 4 weeks ago already but there you have it.

So, on Friday 17th October, Mark & Judith organised a trip to Sabratha for a bunch of us. In the end, Alan and Heather joined too with their car so it was a highly organised mini-expedition :-) It was great having Heather there as she could provide some context (Classics phD).

Also present were Azrina, the cross-postee from Malaysia, and Salim (5 of us in M&J's Xtrail) and a couple of geophysicists (Steve and Dinger) in A&H's Xtrail.

Here are the pics, it was a fantastic day out and I must say I got very excited after recognising various parts of the town, and houses etc. So nice to look at Roman history again and so impressive to see what they had managed to achieve more than 2000 years ago. From the photos, you will see that it was a pretty big town, and quite well preserved/restored in parts too (theatre).

Unfortunately I was having exposure problems and my camera needs a good clean-out too so between the two the photos aren't the best but hope they give a decent impression of the place anyway...

For more on Sabratha, you'll just have to come out and visit...

The coliseum


Azrina about to go and meet the lions...

Panem et circenses

Heather in action, with Steve and Salim

The theatre

An old friend...(Paris)

My latin may be abysmal but I am still able to crack a joke:

Come on, it's funny!!

Dinger and Alan trying out the facilities

Hehehe

The trip was rounded off by a highly enjoyable barbecue at Alan & Heather's, sitting back relaxing gazing at the setting sun...life could be a lot worse.

By the way, Alan & Heather are friends with Nick S whom I know from Rijswijk (see old posts) and Mark & Judith I know through Abi2 from Rij as well so it's rather nice completing that circle and getting to know them all a little :-)

Better now :-)

Well I can't say all is well again but I am certainly feeling a lot better now. The house problem especially has been resolved: basically there was a problem with the wiring of the house: it wasn't earthed! and only had single phase supply. Luckily work agreed to sort it out on Monday so I can keep the house and should be moving in in about 1 week-10 days now.

My driving licence is still not here but should be arriving in the next few days apparently.

I still disagree with Marc but we'll get over it.

I can stop worrying about Avantika being tired of having me around as I will not be staying on that much longer; as well as about the dog as again, it isn't such a long wait anymore and when I went to see him last night he came straight up to me and gave me a big lick on the nose :-)

Photos coming up...

Hrmph

I am having a bad day. Everything is going wrong. First my driver was ill, then my house is going down the tubes, then my driving licence is still not ready, I am having a disagreement with our General Manager and I have a headache. :-(
boo hoo hoo :-( why can't anything work.

No comms

We lost all comms in the office last week for three days due to a cut in the main data cable somewhere down the street. What a very strange feeling that was! Completely missed the US elections, impossible to make any phone calls or let anyone know of the problems as even out-of-office didn't work, only reachable by mobile phone for those who know the number.

I just ended up going to my house and doing offline HSE training but it was starting to get rather tedious towards the end and I don't want to imagine how many lost man-hours that cost us...

But hey, that's part of the package here and it would be rather weird for everything to go smoothly. We have only had 2 power cuts since I got here which is a huge achievement apparently, so things are improving.

I must say I have completely transformed my way of thinking already (you have else you leave)...expecting the unexpected is an understatement, and gaining the ability to be amazed when something is there AND works too is a helpful skill to have ;-) Just getting used to the conecpt of having to fix things on a regular basis and basically remember how to be practical around the house is the biggest thing actually, and it makes you realise just how many comforts you take for granted back home.

Anyway, enough of all that, I should go and enjoy the beautiful sunny weather outside (25 degrees) and upload my offline posts tomorrow.

Ciao ciao!

House

Well the internet and phones have all been down for the last couple of days in the office, so other than internal email it has been impossible to do anything and I’ve had a chance to catch up on some things. That includes writing this blog entry!

Well last time I wrote a proper message I was back at the LCM, the island of detached easy life. However, after 15th October they weren’t able to fix me a room as they were completely full and my booking had been messed up. So I went to the guest house for a night but on the same day found out that my house was going to be delayed another 2 weeks .

As I walked into the afternoon meeting looking crushed by this news, Avantika took pity on me and offered me her house to stay in while she was away in the UK for the week. She kindly offered for me to stay on until my house was ready, and we decided it would be fun to be housemates. So I picked up all my bags again and moved into her spare room.

She has been in the house for 6 months or so but has been very busy and hasn’t finished settling in, so the house is not fully furnished - my presence here though is becoming part of the furnishings ;-) The house is huge, and just round the corner from my house, which is rather convenient to just nip over and check on progress.

Here are a few photos of her house, garden, pool, guard house etc. On the first night here on my own I didn’t really get much sleep, due to all the strange noises this house makes. I must say I was getting rather tired then as I had to keep getting up early to do the ops!

Second night was a little better despite the motion sensor light going off around 4.30 am (wind or rats?) and since then I have settled in nicely. Avantika came back last Sunday on the same flight as Matthew, who also stayed over here so that was quite nice and cosy. M left this Sunday, and Avantika left again yesterday, so I am now back on my own, house-sitting…this time feeling rather more at home!

As for my own house, there’s a story - Libyan style. 2 weeks, the time estimated by Andre before he left on holiday, have come and gone and the house is still not ready. Since end of September, the guard house has been built, car port is up and a ceiling has been painted. So I sent Matthew along last week to start pushing the landlord a little, and I have since been going round every other day, flanked by Musab who has been acting as interpreter/helper both with the landlord and in the shops.We managed to choose all the light fittings and these just got installed yesterday. A new fridge and dishwasher have now appeared though are still waiting to be installed. So progress, finally! I also sent round Andre yesterday, fresh from his holiday, with the maintenance guys to see if they can start the safety checks on the house and gas installation.So maybe this weekend? I won’t be holding my breath…

Oh but just in a crazy twist to my life (come on you can’t be that surprised) I have now got a dog!!! I know, might have been an idea to get a house first, but hey…

A young dog was dumped at Marc and Kathryn’s a few weeks ago and they have been looking for a home for it. So after a couple of weeks I thought I would go and look at him, and Kathryn spotted, and went straight for, my weakness ;-) He is half Alsatian, half desert dog so should have good genes, and seems to be pretty intelligent, which is what I am looking for in a dog. So for now he is staying at their house playing all day with Trabbie-the-dippy-boxer but I hope to have him soon.

I can’t believe I finally have a real doggy after all these years…:-)))))))))))Well that’s it for now, more soon.

Crazy two weeks!

I have just been so busy I haven't had time to phone anyone, let alone write blog entries.

Today I thought I would post an update to the away day: the official photos came through.

Some are to show the atmosphere, others are of my friends.

Enjoy the Tripoli feeling!

Sara the receptionist with a hungry Coutry Chair looking on!

Nick K in full swing

Testing out the seatbelt simulator with Judith

Janel and kids

Team in action

Chatting to Marc G and Jacky H

Da Boyz: Mohanned and Choochoo

bored?!

I have no idea how people can get bored here - at least if they have a job.

A couple of days ago I went from referring to my 'overflowing social schedule' rather ironically to being fully booked for the week in less than 8 hours!

I just spent 10 hours in the office today. Have a quick half-an-hour turnaround before getting some dinner then heading off to a panto rehearsal. Tomorrow should be the same, except you can replace panto by violin teaching. Back to panto on Wednesday for a 'pirate special' rehearsal and I can't quite remember what I'm doing on Thursday.

Yesterday I went in early to do all the ops work then managed to get all sorts of admin and email sorted so felt a lot better to face the week without that interference. I pulled myself out of the office at 2:30 as I had promised myself, and managed to go for a swim and dry off in the sun whilst learning Arabic letters in the afternoon. Then I headed out to The Choo's place to have dinner, which I had offered to cook. I think that not being able to cook here in the LCM is making me miss it more than I expected.



Anyway, it was a good excuse to find a fruit&veg stall and actually buy something finally! I bought two kilos of potatoes and a HUGE bunch of parsley for 3 dinars (that's about 1 pound 20) and I got a free pomegranate thrown in. Then the chap also gave a pomegranate to my driver :-)

We then went to the nice bakery in town and I bought two miniature wholegrain loaves and a pack of mini buns (total volume: one French (medium) carrier bag) for 0.58 dinar!!! The bakery was really lovely inside, you can smell the fresh bread which is being baked in a traditional wood-burning oven and makes you want to buy the whole shop. This is supposed to be the chic-est (and therefore more expensive) bakery in town...



For dinner I made a frittata with blue cheese and peppers which we followed up with some rather nice desserts Matthew had bought, all served on my paper plates and eaten with his spoon collection on the loaned plastic garden table in his big echoey empty house. Hehe.

Otherwise, the well is going ok for a change! They are currently reaming it, now in the lower section which they are widening (this part of the process is called under-reaming). So nothing much for the geo to do (other than resolve persistent computer problems etc etc etc and talk about pressure predictions for the next section with the guys in Houston.



By the way, I have put up a few photos from the away day, which show performers from Ghadames (Libyan interior) performing traditional dances. I wish I had taken my camera, as I caught them playing football while they waited, still all dressed up in these robes!

That's it for now, I need to not stare at a computer or think for the next 1/4 hour, will just relax a bit and read a magazine. I wish I had my CDs, a bit of Ravel piano concerto would be nice right now...

Chow for now!

Tired but happy

I've had a good few days. It is now the end of the weekend...and I am knackered!

Somehow getting back into the office and being drowned in emails that needed addressing really drained me, whilst meanwhile having to look after the Operations as Yvan was at the rig and is now at home for a week. All that, and Choochoo asked me to help him with some seismic interpretation...aaaah.

On top of that there were some meetings at work reviewing the results of an employee survey etc etc so basically I am being kept rather busy and if I didn't know any better I would be in the office from 8 till 8. But I am not on rotation and I know I would just blow a fuse somewhere on Day 4 of the week so it's not worth it.

Thursday, therefore, was hectic, especially as the rig had finally started drilling again! They even managed to finally finish this section and are now pulling out of hole before going back in to ream it: ie to scrub the inside in order to make sure it is clean and fairly smooth. After that the plan is to run a casing liner and cement that in place. Considering the rate things go here, that will probably take another 2-3 days, so nothing too exciting for the geologist, nothing like the last few days when we were looking out for indications of high pressure in the shale we were drilling. Basically we are approaching a high pressured section which needs to be drilled and looked after differently and we are not sure where it starts, as this is an exploration well. So eyes peeled! (but nothing showed up...)

Yesterday I could finally have a lie-in after coming in early for the morning meeting (rig call) the previous day and I slept till midday, after which I luxuriated in my book, which I finished. I was reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy) which ended up being pretty gripping.

At 3pm I went to see a French family who would like me to give their 8-year-old daughter some violin lessons. They live at the Regatta camp, which is a big expat camp not far from the office, where people from 10 oil companies (not us though!) can live. Apparently two of the Colonel's children also have houses there so the security can be unduly strict: they wouldn't let my driver anywhere near the place and I had to wait for the family to pick me up at the gates.

We got on quite well, the father works for Total, not sure yet what his wife does. The little girl, Celine, seems pretty enthusiastic and played quite well for one year of learning so I am quite pleased about that. I will be giving her lessons every Wednesday after work, and they have kindly invited me for dinner next time I go. They also arrived at the beginning of September so are finding their feet here too.

Having seen the Regatta I am actually quite glad we don't have access to it. The houses are not detached and don't have much of a garden. The place has a lot of shared facilities (pool, tennis courts etc) but you don't get much real privacy outdoors, and as a number of local people live their too you still need to be rather careful about what you wear (or don't wear in this case).

In the evening I went to Jimmy's 30th birthday party, which was well-attended and catered for by my maid-to-be, Annalin. She will definitely have to cook for me sometimes!

Today I got up at the ungodly hour of 5.45 in order to get into the office in time to do all the necessary reporting before the morning call. At 8.30 a bus was leaving the office to take us all to an family away day...I must admit I almost didn't go, not being too excited about hanging out with spoilt expat kids all day, but in the end I am glad I went.
It was lovely weather and the day was set in some public gardens with all sorts of play areas for children, and cafes and restaurants for adults (though these were closed but we got an alfresco breakfast and lunch :-) We had to do all sorts of team activities and the two general managers were set a few tasks of their own. It was a very nice way of getting local staff involved too and helped a lot as mixing felt much easier than, say, at the Company Iftar.

Straight after that, I went along to an ArcSoc (archeological society) meeting, to sign up and get put on the list. There I met several people from the panto as well as Glen from the LCM. It's nice to be starting to know a few people, and Dominic from panto invited me for a dinner party in the near future.

I am now pretty tired and need to get up early in the morning so am going to bed very soon. Theoretically I have the day off tomorrow as does everyone who attended the Away Day but I a) have to look after ops and b) am feeling a bit stressed after last week's deluge of scattered work, so I want to put some of that in order to start the week a bit more peacefully. I think I'll treat myself to a half-day though.

Oh, one final funny note from this weekend: the French family I just met are actually direct cousins of someone who used to play the bassoon in my orchestra in Mulhouse!! How crazy is that?!?!

Back in town

I got back to Tripoli yesterday after an extended visa/Eid break back home.

I just about managed to get home on the Sunday: my visa had expired!! Luckily, 110 dinars, an hour's wait and various flapping about the airport later I managed to get an extension and made it in time for the flight.

Monday I went to drop off my passport for the new visa at the Embassy...and after the first two applications, that was it! System crashed, come back next Monday (after Eid). So I had to add on 2 days to my stay at home, which admittedly wasn't exactly a punishment!

In the afternoon I went along to a dermatologist, to finally have my hands examined by a specialist. It turns out it was indeed an allergy with symptoms like dishydrosis, and it is eczema on the back of my knees.
The cause of the allergy, however, was not something I ate, or the swimming pool or laundry product, but the body's reaction to fungal spores. This is not an immediate reaction and it seems in fact like it was triggered during our stay at the guest house, on the pre-visit. These spores mean one thing: badly cleaned bathroom/shower area.

So all that grief because a cleaner hasn't done her job properly. I am rather unimpressed and am going to have to have a word with the accomodation people here.

As for the current state of my hands, I am happy to announce that they now look pretty normal from above, if a little pink and tender. The skin is still falling off from the palms/under the fingers but at least I don't need to walk around hiding my hands. The dermatologist gave me some good creams.

The rest of the week I just caught up with loose ends from the hectic time of my move. I also managed to finally get the packers to examine, and in fact pack up, all my belongings from the storage rooms. All is now in the capable hands of Team Allied, who are just waiting for John Lewis to make an export delivery and then it should all hopefully be on its way. I'm not even going to start on how complicated it has been for me to get here, or rant about the HR system in this company...

Here are some photos of the momentous event: at first the packers had to bring everything outside...



Finally, the lorry arrived! in goes the Big Old Desk...



and more boxes, and more...



...until there is just enough space for a stick insect to squeeze through! Great packing lads!



I also had a chance to go and see Rachel's new flat in Fulham, which was exciting and very grown up; as well as visit Christian and Angela and their new baby just down the road. Here are a couple of pictures of the proud parents and little Maya :-)




I don't know what it is with my friends but they all seem to insist on having their children at the same time. So of course, I wasn't too surprised to find out that Marc and Alena's baby, mini-Marc, was also born on 27th September! Congratulations guys!



I flew back yesterday and while I was waiting in the rather long queue at immigration, someone remarked on which company I worked for (didn't help that I was wearing my 'branded backpack' - or did it). At first I was non-commital but it turned out to be our new wellsite geologist! Who was due on the rig last week but was also delayed for reasons mentioned above. So I helped him through the airport and handed him over to his driver, then went into the office to find far too many emails waiting so decided and head home after batling with them for an hour.

I got to the LCM to find that I had been booked in for 7th...November!! Luckily they had one room left, unfortunately smoking, for last night. They told me I would have to change rooms today as they are pretty fully booked but as I have been a long-term resident here they seemed to sort it all out and told me this morning that I could stay put till the end of my booking, which is next week. :-)

It was rather nice coming back to LCM as everyone was very welcoming, coming to shake my hand and treating me to nice bits of food/helping me with my bags etc. Almost feels like coming home, though I still feel a bit detached. Same in the office: everyone friendly and welcoming, which makes such a difference when you've been away and more than one person noticed!

The only thing missing now is my motley crew at the LCM: Amir, the persian finance guy who has gone back to Dubai for visa purposes, who is over on a short term assignement and stayed at the LCM for a couple of weeks last time; Shady (pronounced with a short 'a'!) and Tarek, from Halliburton and Baker, as well as Mike-the-security-man, who is probably back in Tunisia now after a week in Libya. Ali-the-big-Egyptian is still here, and Glen-the-Canadian is back so there is some degree of continuity!

Finally, today I had my first Arabic lesson! Strange feeling of having to learn yet another alphabet...this is going to have to be the last one, really! So far, so good, it seems to be a lot easier than Russian (no cases!) though the art is clearly all in the dots...

Ah, speaking of Russian, I just received via EJ via ExpatMail a fantastic children's story book full of Cheburashka and Krokodil Gena! It was so very sweet of Sasha K (aka little brother) to send that over and really reminded me of all my friends from Salym. The legend lives on! Hmm, maybe I should send a copy of some of the pages to Marc for baby Marc, just to complete the circle...

On that note, I am offski!

تصبح على خير

Social whirl

Well I felt rather lazy after dinner last night so concluded a lazy day by doing nothing!

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 Jimmy

All-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.