A Random Day in Seismic QC

Perhaps you'd like to hear about a random day of mine in Oman...

There are three of us in the QC office now, Atila the Turk and Nurul from Bangladesh. Today, apart from QC-ing the daily data, we spent some time planning for our next prospect. This prospect will be near to the location of our previous prospect. It will be down south where there are camels, and vegetation taller than 2 feet. No sand dunes though.

I got into a heated argument today with Atila and Nurul. We were figuring out how to go about renumbering receiver lines for this new prospect. I tried to explain why I thought the method they had planned wouldn't work, and why we need to do it a different way, but they insisted it would work. I attempted to test it and ran into about 8 million difficulties along the way, finally got them sorted out, and now the jobs are running on our computers so I just have to wait.

In the afternoon me and Nurul finally sorted out exactly where our disagreement was. He thinks attributes get created and applied to seismic traces according to the receiver line and receiver station we have in our raw data, whereas I'm almost certain they get applied according to the channel number, and only the channel number. Anyway we will find out when the jobs finish running (although chances are I'll find some thing wrong with the jobs after they finish and have to run them once or twice again).

This afternoon I took some time out to study Arabic. I'm learning different versions of the verb "to be". I've been walking around surveying people on what is the correct way to say "I was not there" or "I will not be there". So far, I've got 5 and 3 different ways to say each of those respective phrases. It’s because my sample population comes from various places in Turkey, Jordan, Oman, and Tunisia. Arabic is notorious for sounding very different in different countries.

Unfortunately I didn't get any time to continue my investigation into the cause of inflation in the American economy (that supposed to sound half sarcastic). I have a dream that I want to get economics Ph.D. one of these years so I've been spending time understanding the hell out of supply and demand curves, diagramming the cost and benefit of subsidies, and now, understanding how inflation happens.

Another thing I didn't get around to doing today was making notes for the course I'll be attending in France, after my next leave. That's right, for the first 4 weeks of my next hitch I'll be staying in a hotel just outside of Paris learning about a new processing software that our company intends to switch over to. I really want to spend some time thinking of just how we will be using this software, and know what parts I should have 100% clear. Switching our office over to new software is going to be a big job. I'm a little frightened, but also a little looking forward to the challenge.

Now that the day is over, I don’t feel like beer, so instead I’m going to go watch a cheesy movie in the mess trailer staring Vin Diesel as a muscley Special Forces officer on a mission to baby-sit 5 kids, during which he will use discipline to turn their lives around for the better. The Pacifier. Oh yeah. Then I’ll go to bed.

Okay, so there you go, a pretty typical, if slightly more interesting than usual, day as a QC on a seismic crew.

Happy New Year Updates

It has been a while. I have two overdue things to write about.

1)I finally got to see small town Oman! I visited the family of one of my co-workers, Soleman. They live in Bahla, about a half hour from Nizwa. I got tobe "that crazy foreigner". In one situation, a kid on the street saw me and proceeded to run into his house, yelling "ingleezi, ingleezi!!". Then his 3 siblings all came out to stare. I ate lots of "Kahwa" and dates. I had to try to speak Arabic. Finally a place in Oman were people don't speak much English. It's hard to find.

I was struck by how not-busy life is in rural. Other things that struck me: People don't have furniture. Everyone, babies and grandmas alike, just sit on the floor. Eating is very different too. The family just spreads some newspapers on the floor and they all eat from one big plate. They grab a handful of food, usually rice and something. They squish the food into a lump in their fist and eat that. I like it! And it certainly makes for fewer dishes.

2) For Christmas I went to Mexico to a town that takes two days of traveling to get to from El Paso, and that has cows and chickens roaming freely through the streets. The most exotic experience of this trip was purchasing meat. There isn't much fresh meat in the stores, so we got the idea in our head to buy a goat and have it slaughtered. I came down the morning we bought it and there indeed was a little cute white goat tied to a tree, happily eating grass. Then they tied it up, slit its throat, and we watched it die for the next 15 minutes. That was intense. I always wanted to see something large be killed, I feel morally obligated because I eat meat. It wasn't fun.

I got into Muscat today at 3:45am. Emirates Air just started a direct, 13 hour, Houston to Dubai flight, which makes my trip easier. Although, I spent 7 hours last night wandering around the Dubai Airport.