I deleted those nasty comments and my post about them. I feel a little guilty for being a censor, but oh well.
I think my time in Oman is nearing its finish, and for that reason I'm going to kick myself in the arse to make some more posts and thus wrap things up in a nice symmetrical way.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Monday, June 8, 2009
Smoke Break
I'm on night shift. It's 2am and there is a full moon. I took a break outside with a guy from southern India who grew up in Saudi Arabia and a guy from Algeria who was chased from his hometown by terrorists. We talked about a French guy who claims that less than four cigarettes per day doesn't affect your health. I say he's full of shit.
Good times.
Good times.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
A Camel Shepherd
Yesterday I met a camel shepherd living alone in a two walled plywood shack in the middle of nowhere. In the shack is a small bed, a chair, a plastic mat, a coil of hose and a thermos. Next to this shack is a fenced in space with three female camels. Next to the camels is a small melon patch which is also fenced in to keep roaming camels out. The rest of the area is just empty desert. The only break in 360 degrees of flat horizon is three flaming smokestacks from a distant oil and gas separation facility.
Alfredo, a surveyor from the Philippines took me and Agata on this field trip to see some camels. Alfredo had talked to this guy earlier, so he expected us. We got there and said hi and the guy brought over a camel and we proceeded to have a 20 minute photo shoot involving every possible combination of: me, Agata, Alfredo, and the camel -- standing or sitting -- smiling, waving, or not realizing a picture was being taken. The camel was pretty pissed off, it kept braying like a donkey and nipping at the shepherd and us. A couple of times when it got really excited, in the middle of the excitement it would regurgitate up some food and the braying would stop while it chewed and then it would start up again.
Later on the guy offered us some tea. Black tea, no milk, very sweet. I tried to talk to him a little bit but my "book and TV learned" Arabic didn't mesh too well with his "camel shepherd from Baluchistan" Arabic. I managed to eck out that he's from Baluchistan, he's worked here for 17 years, this farm has 180 camels total, and a camels worth of meat is worth 1000 Omani Rials. He didn't understand me when I tried to ask his name.
We took a walk to the melon garden and had another photo shoot while holding various watermelons and zucchinis. He also got a kite flying for us, a kite he had made out of a plastic shopping bag and some twigs from a bush.
This setting was so crazy. If somehow I could take a snapshot of me in this setting and send it back 5 years to the me of the past, before I had ever heard of Oman, I wouldn't have known what to think.
Some more photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/selah/sets/72157608592064463/
Alfredo, a surveyor from the Philippines took me and Agata on this field trip to see some camels. Alfredo had talked to this guy earlier, so he expected us. We got there and said hi and the guy brought over a camel and we proceeded to have a 20 minute photo shoot involving every possible combination of: me, Agata, Alfredo, and the camel -- standing or sitting -- smiling, waving, or not realizing a picture was being taken. The camel was pretty pissed off, it kept braying like a donkey and nipping at the shepherd and us. A couple of times when it got really excited, in the middle of the excitement it would regurgitate up some food and the braying would stop while it chewed and then it would start up again.
Later on the guy offered us some tea. Black tea, no milk, very sweet. I tried to talk to him a little bit but my "book and TV learned" Arabic didn't mesh too well with his "camel shepherd from Baluchistan" Arabic. I managed to eck out that he's from Baluchistan, he's worked here for 17 years, this farm has 180 camels total, and a camels worth of meat is worth 1000 Omani Rials. He didn't understand me when I tried to ask his name.
We took a walk to the melon garden and had another photo shoot while holding various watermelons and zucchinis. He also got a kite flying for us, a kite he had made out of a plastic shopping bag and some twigs from a bush.
This setting was so crazy. If somehow I could take a snapshot of me in this setting and send it back 5 years to the me of the past, before I had ever heard of Oman, I wouldn't have known what to think.
Some more photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/selah/sets/72157608592064463/
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Campmove
A few days ago we moved camp. This was the first time we had moved for eight months and I was dreading the packing and unpacking of the office, especially with our new cluster of computers, their complicated shutdown routine, miles of network cable and large multi screen displays. It was indeed a long day, but it ended up being okay.
In the days leading up to the move my schedule was a little off because I was switching from working nights. Because of this I easily woke up at 3:30am the morning of the move, got a shower and headed to the office where Nurul and Fabian, my respectively Bangladeshi and French coworkers were just about to begin the two page procedure for shutting down "the system". We shutdown, we unplugged, we packed, we found a tennis ball that had been lost for 6 months, threw things in drawers, threw things in trashcans. When everything was in boxes and shoved up against one wall, we went around and duck taped all the shelves and drawers shut.
As we finished packing our office, the first camp move trucks arrived and proceeded to load their cargo. Their cargo consisted of a 50 ton triple-wide trailers. The loading of these trailers is a balancing act worthy of a circus, complete with dangerous wobbling from side to side. The first truck made quite a spectacle as it tried to lift the mechanics workshop complex. Twice it got stuck with the workshop half loaded and the trucks front wheels lifted 8 feet in the air due to the weight of the load. All the while, a tiny man in blue coveralls is emphatically waving instructions to the driver. After the first failures, they had to get TWO trucks, one in front of the other like a train. They attached the miniature truck train to the workshop via 2inch thick steel cable and pulled everything 30ft forward so the origional truck could drive around to the other side and try again to lift the workshop, this time from behind. Forty five minutes later, the ordeal came to a conclusion as the workshop was finally loaded onto a truck, and then transfered to one of the larger carrier trucks. At the very moment of triumph it hit me that there were 19 remaining trailers and it was going to be a long day.
At this point I began the next phase of the day which consisted of wandering around and taking random pictures. First pictures of campmove related events... then close ups of big trucks... then mud splatters on the trucks.. then cool shapes in the sand. I made a friend with an Omani who I didn't recognize when he said "hey selah" and invited me for a cup of Omani tea. His name was Mubarak and he is a cargo truck driver. There was another guy too. Omani tea is pretty tasty, black tea mixed tasty herbs and lots of condensed milk and sugar. We chatted. One of the guys in his hometown has 48 children and four wives. Mubarak said he has seven children and then paused and corrected himself, "eight actually". He and the other guy showed me some pictures of their families as well as an ostrich and some camels. I shared a few pictures from of my fat cat Meow Meow and my friend Carolyn wearing an Oman t-shirt.
Later I crossed paths with Agata, the other girl on the crew. She's my age and from Poland. She just finished school in Poland and started working for our company just outside of London. After never having been outside of Europe, she's traveled to both Singapore and Oman in the last two weeks. She's still got the travel buzz. We proceeded to wander away from camp and spend several hours hunting shell fossils and taking pictures of plants and lizards. Its special to find someone who likes doing that as much as I do.
When we wandered back through camp, half of the skids had been loaded and left. Ten trucks, each with its 50 ton trailer, had begun a three hour journey to the new campsite at an average speed of 11 miles per hour. And as the crow flies this new campsite is actually only 9 miles away. We caught a ride to the new campsite and took a detour around the convoy, but when we arrived we lost our air conditioned truck seats to some stranded vibrator drivers who needed to start their shift. By this time it had become a hot day, so one of the water truck drivers took pity on us pale skinned females and offered us the air conditioned cab of his water truck. The cab was 10 ft off the ground. He had a cassette of Omani music, so we sat there and watched the empty desert with Bedouin tunes playing in the background.
Later in the day, we watched the loading process in reverse, as they set up our new camp. Me and Agata sat in the shadow of yet another truck and sipped orange drink juice boxes and ate omelet sandwiches. A couple younger Omanis walked by us. One stopped and pointed at my backpack and said "I am drinks"... "I am very drinks" and then looked at me. A couple seconds of silence passed before I realized what he meant. I felt real cool asking "are you thirsty" in Arabic, except I'm sure it sounded more like "it is you are turstee?" with a heavy accent. I gave him a bottle of water, and he had a drink and gave it back and continued on his way.
Unpacking the office was a workout, but it put me in a happy energized mood, the same way a long run or a soccer game does. Our nightshift QC's joined us for the unpacking and afterwards our QC posse sat outside on the boxes that had held our computers and watched the sun go down. We contemplated what we'd do if the electricity didn't come back. We wouldn't be able to go back to work so instead we'd have to go do something else fun like have a campfire in the desert. But alas, the electricity did come back on and we did have to go to work processing a 24 hour backup of data.
Once we got the computers running... we finished the night off with some beers and Ricard at the camp bar. Everyone was a little extra rowdy from the excitement of the day. Any break of routine is excitement out here.
All in all a very nice day.
In the days leading up to the move my schedule was a little off because I was switching from working nights. Because of this I easily woke up at 3:30am the morning of the move, got a shower and headed to the office where Nurul and Fabian, my respectively Bangladeshi and French coworkers were just about to begin the two page procedure for shutting down "the system". We shutdown, we unplugged, we packed, we found a tennis ball that had been lost for 6 months, threw things in drawers, threw things in trashcans. When everything was in boxes and shoved up against one wall, we went around and duck taped all the shelves and drawers shut.
As we finished packing our office, the first camp move trucks arrived and proceeded to load their cargo. Their cargo consisted of a 50 ton triple-wide trailers. The loading of these trailers is a balancing act worthy of a circus, complete with dangerous wobbling from side to side. The first truck made quite a spectacle as it tried to lift the mechanics workshop complex. Twice it got stuck with the workshop half loaded and the trucks front wheels lifted 8 feet in the air due to the weight of the load. All the while, a tiny man in blue coveralls is emphatically waving instructions to the driver. After the first failures, they had to get TWO trucks, one in front of the other like a train. They attached the miniature truck train to the workshop via 2inch thick steel cable and pulled everything 30ft forward so the origional truck could drive around to the other side and try again to lift the workshop, this time from behind. Forty five minutes later, the ordeal came to a conclusion as the workshop was finally loaded onto a truck, and then transfered to one of the larger carrier trucks. At the very moment of triumph it hit me that there were 19 remaining trailers and it was going to be a long day.
At this point I began the next phase of the day which consisted of wandering around and taking random pictures. First pictures of campmove related events... then close ups of big trucks... then mud splatters on the trucks.. then cool shapes in the sand. I made a friend with an Omani who I didn't recognize when he said "hey selah" and invited me for a cup of Omani tea. His name was Mubarak and he is a cargo truck driver. There was another guy too. Omani tea is pretty tasty, black tea mixed tasty herbs and lots of condensed milk and sugar. We chatted. One of the guys in his hometown has 48 children and four wives. Mubarak said he has seven children and then paused and corrected himself, "eight actually". He and the other guy showed me some pictures of their families as well as an ostrich and some camels. I shared a few pictures from of my fat cat Meow Meow and my friend Carolyn wearing an Oman t-shirt.
Later I crossed paths with Agata, the other girl on the crew. She's my age and from Poland. She just finished school in Poland and started working for our company just outside of London. After never having been outside of Europe, she's traveled to both Singapore and Oman in the last two weeks. She's still got the travel buzz. We proceeded to wander away from camp and spend several hours hunting shell fossils and taking pictures of plants and lizards. Its special to find someone who likes doing that as much as I do.
When we wandered back through camp, half of the skids had been loaded and left. Ten trucks, each with its 50 ton trailer, had begun a three hour journey to the new campsite at an average speed of 11 miles per hour. And as the crow flies this new campsite is actually only 9 miles away. We caught a ride to the new campsite and took a detour around the convoy, but when we arrived we lost our air conditioned truck seats to some stranded vibrator drivers who needed to start their shift. By this time it had become a hot day, so one of the water truck drivers took pity on us pale skinned females and offered us the air conditioned cab of his water truck. The cab was 10 ft off the ground. He had a cassette of Omani music, so we sat there and watched the empty desert with Bedouin tunes playing in the background.
Later in the day, we watched the loading process in reverse, as they set up our new camp. Me and Agata sat in the shadow of yet another truck and sipped orange drink juice boxes and ate omelet sandwiches. A couple younger Omanis walked by us. One stopped and pointed at my backpack and said "I am drinks"... "I am very drinks" and then looked at me. A couple seconds of silence passed before I realized what he meant. I felt real cool asking "are you thirsty" in Arabic, except I'm sure it sounded more like "it is you are turstee?" with a heavy accent. I gave him a bottle of water, and he had a drink and gave it back and continued on his way.
Unpacking the office was a workout, but it put me in a happy energized mood, the same way a long run or a soccer game does. Our nightshift QC's joined us for the unpacking and afterwards our QC posse sat outside on the boxes that had held our computers and watched the sun go down. We contemplated what we'd do if the electricity didn't come back. We wouldn't be able to go back to work so instead we'd have to go do something else fun like have a campfire in the desert. But alas, the electricity did come back on and we did have to go to work processing a 24 hour backup of data.
Once we got the computers running... we finished the night off with some beers and Ricard at the camp bar. Everyone was a little extra rowdy from the excitement of the day. Any break of routine is excitement out here.
All in all a very nice day.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Morocco Pictures
I just got back from a three week trip around Morocco with Matt, Marta, and Carolyn. I got engaged in Fez. I was offered pot 20 times on the way to Al Hoceima. I learned how to haggle in Marrakesh. I got my ass kicked climbing Jebel Toubkal. I picked a giant sea slug off of a rock in Oulidia. Take a look...
Monday, July 28, 2008
A Few More Days in Bahla
My trips to Bahla are a tad strange. I give Soleman a call on the GSM and he invites me with enthusiasm to come see his family... always saying "come sooner", "stay longer", "we can't wait to see you". But its Shehar his second wife who actually takes care of me, and I have no idea how Shehar feels about it.
But I go anyway hoping I'm not being too rude or too much trouble... because what a chance! To spend a few days living with a conservative arab muslim family. Here is a culture that is as different from mine as is possible to find on this planet.
Something I've found out is learning a second language is ridiculously hard. I severely underestimated the difficulty. Its so frusterating for me because what I really want from these visits is to make a connection and a friendship with someone there, but instead my interactions more like that of a 3 year old in a awkward 25 year old body. I can barely speak. I can't do much except get in the way. After a "salaam alaykum" most people just ignore me, or maybe stare at me a little bit.
Oh well, maybe I've failed doing much in the way of making personal connections. Being an observer is still very cool.
I got to observe a small marriage cerimony. It was the signing of the marriage contract, not the wedding itself. Maybe 120 people attended. The men and women sat separated by 50 yards. We sat outside at night on a mat surrounded by date palms and ate a dinner of fruit and rice and tasty hunks of beef.
I got to see the daily routine. Always warm sweet chai in the morning along with some fried bread and other goodies. Meals are laid out on the floor on top of a plastic table cloth. Everybody shares the same plate and eats with their hands. A couple water glasses get passed around and shared. The food is always good and served on a humongous mound of rice. The baby, Harif, is always trying to get attention by knocking over water glasses or grabbing handfulls of food, and everyone helps deter him, and otherwise taking care of him. I'm really impressed by how good the kids are at helping out with babies and other household chores. I was never that good.
I got to see the comfortable afternoon routine of walking around and going for visits to the houses of neighbors and friends, where you are served your classic Omani "kahwa" and dates. And usually a big plate of bananas and oranges and mellons to go with it. Your host will sit and cut up oranges and feed you slices until you say "bas!", "enough!". I saw how every house I visit is filled with moms and grandmoms and daughters and aunts and kids of all ages. You are never lonely in these houses in Bahla.
I listened while Mubarak, Soleman's 18 year old son from his first wife, played a collection Eminem and other American rap as he drove me to the airport. It was full of lyrics concerning "taking sexy babes to the backseat of cars" and "telling white america to fuck off". I'm pretty sure he didn't understand the lyrics. And then it was a little bizzare to watch him piously pause this music when the evening call to prayer began.
I got to watch 15 year old Lubna, Shehar's neice, reciting the Qur'an while Shehar held the Qur'an and corrected her where she forgot a word, or said the word wrong. Shehar told me in watered down arabic that "Lubna is very good in school, she memorizes the Qur'an. These other two nieces are no good they don't memorize the Qur'an." Lubna told me shes still working on it, shes only got about 30 pages memorized so far.
I spent a whole lot of time watching Shehar. I wonder what her life is like. I wonder what goes on in her head. What makes her happy, what makes her sad. I wonder what she thinks about having a strange and scandalously dressed American dropped off at her house. I wish I could talk to her. She seems like the perfect Omani mom. She's about 5 years older than me, could be my older sister. Her life is sooo different from mine.
Let me make it clear, although this family is not too sure what to do with me, they are very kind to me. They give me the best bed, the best food, the front car seat. They take me to the salon where Huda spends an hour and a half drawing beautiful henna patterns on my hands. They take me for walks and visits to neighbors and always pour me lots of kahwa and chai. I wish I could figure out how to give something back.
Well... shukran my Omani family. Shukran.
But I go anyway hoping I'm not being too rude or too much trouble... because what a chance! To spend a few days living with a conservative arab muslim family. Here is a culture that is as different from mine as is possible to find on this planet.
Something I've found out is learning a second language is ridiculously hard. I severely underestimated the difficulty. Its so frusterating for me because what I really want from these visits is to make a connection and a friendship with someone there, but instead my interactions more like that of a 3 year old in a awkward 25 year old body. I can barely speak. I can't do much except get in the way. After a "salaam alaykum" most people just ignore me, or maybe stare at me a little bit.
Oh well, maybe I've failed doing much in the way of making personal connections. Being an observer is still very cool.
I got to observe a small marriage cerimony. It was the signing of the marriage contract, not the wedding itself. Maybe 120 people attended. The men and women sat separated by 50 yards. We sat outside at night on a mat surrounded by date palms and ate a dinner of fruit and rice and tasty hunks of beef.
I got to see the daily routine. Always warm sweet chai in the morning along with some fried bread and other goodies. Meals are laid out on the floor on top of a plastic table cloth. Everybody shares the same plate and eats with their hands. A couple water glasses get passed around and shared. The food is always good and served on a humongous mound of rice. The baby, Harif, is always trying to get attention by knocking over water glasses or grabbing handfulls of food, and everyone helps deter him, and otherwise taking care of him. I'm really impressed by how good the kids are at helping out with babies and other household chores. I was never that good.
I got to see the comfortable afternoon routine of walking around and going for visits to the houses of neighbors and friends, where you are served your classic Omani "kahwa" and dates. And usually a big plate of bananas and oranges and mellons to go with it. Your host will sit and cut up oranges and feed you slices until you say "bas!", "enough!". I saw how every house I visit is filled with moms and grandmoms and daughters and aunts and kids of all ages. You are never lonely in these houses in Bahla.
I listened while Mubarak, Soleman's 18 year old son from his first wife, played a collection Eminem and other American rap as he drove me to the airport. It was full of lyrics concerning "taking sexy babes to the backseat of cars" and "telling white america to fuck off". I'm pretty sure he didn't understand the lyrics. And then it was a little bizzare to watch him piously pause this music when the evening call to prayer began.
I got to watch 15 year old Lubna, Shehar's neice, reciting the Qur'an while Shehar held the Qur'an and corrected her where she forgot a word, or said the word wrong. Shehar told me in watered down arabic that "Lubna is very good in school, she memorizes the Qur'an. These other two nieces are no good they don't memorize the Qur'an." Lubna told me shes still working on it, shes only got about 30 pages memorized so far.
I spent a whole lot of time watching Shehar. I wonder what her life is like. I wonder what goes on in her head. What makes her happy, what makes her sad. I wonder what she thinks about having a strange and scandalously dressed American dropped off at her house. I wish I could talk to her. She seems like the perfect Omani mom. She's about 5 years older than me, could be my older sister. Her life is sooo different from mine.
Let me make it clear, although this family is not too sure what to do with me, they are very kind to me. They give me the best bed, the best food, the front car seat. They take me to the salon where Huda spends an hour and a half drawing beautiful henna patterns on my hands. They take me for walks and visits to neighbors and always pour me lots of kahwa and chai. I wish I could figure out how to give something back.
Well... shukran my Omani family. Shukran.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Hitch from Hell - Positive Update
Since I last wrote a couple things happened...
Number one:
Out of the blue, I was served an absolutely delicious bowl of tomato soup. For the two weeks leading up to this, every day the soup consisted of flour, salt, and hot water. Stir in a few shreds of carrot and call it carrot soup. Add a couple mashed peas, call it vegetable. But then, suddenly, this delicious bowl of tomato soup with perfectly crisped croutons and a hint of rosemary. I exclaimed out loud when I tasted it and Mark said "oh yeah, Tak is back". Tak has been a cook here for more than 10 years. He's an older guy from somewhere near Nepal. He's missing a lot of teeth, and doesn't speak much english, but he's got enough to smile and have a conversation when he sees you. "Hi... how are you?... good good... night shift? yeah night shift.... very good [smile, nod, laugh]... have good night". He works way too much as do all of our kitchen staff, but for some reason he makes effort to make us exceptionally good soup. And he likes doing it. I'm touched.
Number two:
In our office we finally got it together and asked our boss about getting another person or two and he was great about it. He says he gets a lot of resumes from local people and he'll send us some. I'd be happy to actually have an Omani in the office. I'm happy to have my job, but part of me thinks its dumb that I get flown halfway around the world to do it. Its not like its THAT hard. I'm convinced you could take a reasonably bright person, who never stepped foot in a university, and make them a perfectly good QC after not too long. Especially in this part of the world. Hell, I'd say the same thing for a lot of jobs.
Number one:
Out of the blue, I was served an absolutely delicious bowl of tomato soup. For the two weeks leading up to this, every day the soup consisted of flour, salt, and hot water. Stir in a few shreds of carrot and call it carrot soup. Add a couple mashed peas, call it vegetable. But then, suddenly, this delicious bowl of tomato soup with perfectly crisped croutons and a hint of rosemary. I exclaimed out loud when I tasted it and Mark said "oh yeah, Tak is back". Tak has been a cook here for more than 10 years. He's an older guy from somewhere near Nepal. He's missing a lot of teeth, and doesn't speak much english, but he's got enough to smile and have a conversation when he sees you. "Hi... how are you?... good good... night shift? yeah night shift.... very good [smile, nod, laugh]... have good night". He works way too much as do all of our kitchen staff, but for some reason he makes effort to make us exceptionally good soup. And he likes doing it. I'm touched.
Number two:
In our office we finally got it together and asked our boss about getting another person or two and he was great about it. He says he gets a lot of resumes from local people and he'll send us some. I'd be happy to actually have an Omani in the office. I'm happy to have my job, but part of me thinks its dumb that I get flown halfway around the world to do it. Its not like its THAT hard. I'm convinced you could take a reasonably bright person, who never stepped foot in a university, and make them a perfectly good QC after not too long. Especially in this part of the world. Hell, I'd say the same thing for a lot of jobs.
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