ON BEING HOT AND BOTHERED...

Good day all, welcome to another thrilling update from the oil patch of Iraq...today we are going to discuss climate and entomology.  I hope that you enjoy it...

Let me tell you about summer in Basra, Iraq...it is hot, very hot!  Today it is 51 degrees C (that's 124 degrees Farenheit for those of us from the US).  It is like walking out into a blast furnace everytime you leave a building to venture outside.  It literally steals your breath away like being puched in the ribs by some hot-handed brute.  It actually makes your insides feel hot, and your exhalation seems cool as it blows back onto your skin.  Let me tell you something else about the summer here...it is windy, very windy!  Everyday for the past ten days (I am told) we have experienced 30 to 40 knot winds ALL day.  These winds, called shamals, carry sand and pebbles, so you feel raw if you spend too much time out in them.  If I were a man more vain perhaps I would appreciate the natural exfoliation as it would save me some time at night using masks and creams to rid myself of my layer of dead skin; sadly as I am not THAT guy I just find it annoying as hell.  Just for fun and to give a bit more information on them, here is what Wikipedia has to say:

"A shamal is a northwesterly wind blowing over Iraq and the Persian Gulf states (including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait), often strong during the day, but decreasing at night. This weather effect occurs anywhere from once to several times a year, mostly in summer but sometimes in winter. The resulting wind typically creates large sandstorms that impact Iraq, most sand having been picked up from Jordan and Syria...

According to folklore, the first major shamal occurring around May 25 is known as the Al-Haffar, or driller, since it drills huge depressions in desert sand dunes. The second, arriving in early June, coincides with the dawn star, Thorayya (Pleiades), and is therefore named Barih Thorayya. During this event, which is more violent than the others, fishermen usually remain in port because ancient folklore tells them that this wind devours ships. Near the end of June, the last shamal arrives, known as the Al-Dabaran, or the follower. It is violent and continues for several days. Local residents keep doors and windows firmly shut as this shamal includes an all-penetrating fine dust which gets into everything."

The interesting thing here for me is that the sand which is rubbing me raw and invading my clothes and sleeper trailer comes from as far away as the ergs of the Kingdom of Jordan and the bloody mess that is Syria.  It is almost like travelling to these places without travelling at all...I will bring home the sands of the entire Middle East from the relative comforts of the base here in Basra.

Heavy winds are anathema to shooting a land seismic survey as the geophones register the winds creating huge amounts of noise in the data; seeing as we are here to shoot seismic and not to enjoy the pleasant atmosphere of this place it is frustrating to go on standby every day due to wind noise.

This is what I landed in yesterday, and they result from the shamal winds.  Seriously, it looked just like this.

That brings me to another fun fact about the deserts of Iraq...nothing grows here; there is no green as far as the eyes can see in any direction, just windswept hardpan, rusting tanks and cars and oil drums, and the occasional oilfield structure.  Despite the absolute and austere desolation of the place insects and creepy-crawling things seem to exist in greater abundance and variety here than in almost anywhere else I have ever been.   Beetles and crickets and spiders and centipedes and scorpions and moths and flies and mosquitoes abound here in the land of nowhere.  There are all varieties...beetles are huge, hulking black tanks as well as little petite dung beetles and medium sized metallic flashy beetles.  It strikes me as amusing that the morning brings a landscape in the yard riddled with the dessicated corpses of all these beatles which mirrors the greater landscape where tanks and cars rust out in the sun slowing decomposing to rust. There seems to be all sorts of crickets of varying size and each seems to have something to say throughout the twilight hours.  There are terrifying looking centipedes here, though the largest specimen I have seen was only about three inches long.  I have only seen a single scorpion, but it was black and armored and roughly the size of my palm...a nasty looking thing.  Last night I saw a moth as large as a bat...I don't know what I would have done if it had landed on me, perhaps the camp would have thought that our first female had come to visit.  And the flies, the air is simply thick with them; it is thoroughly disusting.  And that brings me to the spiders...spiders are everywhere and of all shapes and sizes.  Most appear relatively unworrisome, but you come across the occassional one which definitely looks like it means business.  I saw an enormous wolf spider last night (at least I think it was a wolf spider, all hairy and with fangs that you could clearly see).  Lastly, there is my least favorite denizen of all, the camel spider, or more correctly the solifugid or wind scorpion.  These creatures look like ten-legged mutant ninja spiders...they have huge mandibles which are absolutely razor sharp and are said to have the strongest bite per weight of any animal in the world.  They are aggresive too, like they don't know their own size (they can be quite large...I saw one about the size of my fist yesterday), so they have a tendency to charge at you if you startle them.  One charged me a couple of days ago, and I believe that my jump might have medalled me in both the High- and Long-jumps at the Olympics on a bad year.  God, but I do hate nearly all of these things...too many things to bite you, too many things to discover as unwelcome bedmates.

Camel Spiders...the WORST!

Can you dig why they freak me out so much?

Turns out that we also seem to have developed a bit of a snake infestation in camp as well, so that's really great.  I haven't seen one yet myself, but many have encountered them sitting under stairs or sunning in the yard.  Luckily I have little real fear of snakes, though obviously I respect their ability to hurt you.

Looks cute right, snuggled into this guy's boot...sadly, very venomous.

So, those are my thoughts on Iraq for today...it is still early yet, so perhaps a new adventure or challenge will arise before the day is done to populate a posting for tomorrow.  I sure hope so...life out here can get a bit dull if you don't look for things to keep you occupied and interested.

Back in Iraq

Well, I find myself back in the field camp in Southern Iraq...I have been negligent of late in posting, so I will make a real attempt to be better during this hitch. I guess I should get everyone caught up with what I have been up too the last few months so that we may begin again with a clean slate.

I had a full, very busy hitch in March/April, and then returned home for a short 11 days. It was wonderful to visit with my loved ones there, but there is never any rest for the weary, so I was quickly headed back to the Middle East to attend a training course for an upcoming work posting and then to teach a Start School course for a couple of weeks in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

I don't know if you have ever been to Abu Dhabi, but I find that it is an interesting place.  Much like Dubai it is very international in character with just enough tradition to seem authentic.  It is quite a sight to walk through the malls and see women fully covered and men in their thobes discussing international business over cups of coffee at Starbucks.  The Versace store sitting next to the store selling Yas Arabic perfumes and colognes.  Needless to say, I find that I like the place.  As a Westerner I can enjoy a certain secularity at any of the international hotels...it actually almost enhances the experience of leisure when there are restrictions to it - you find that the more a thing is nearing the point of taboo the more thrilling and powerful the experience becomes.

I did a lot more this time that I was in Abu Dhabi than I did the last time...I took a desert safari and went "dune bashing" which was tremendous fun.  I rode a camel and watched a belly dancer while enjoying meats cooked over open coals in a "traditional" Beduin camp.  We went sand boarding down the dunes surrounding camp (much more difficult than it seems it should be). We smoked shisha by moonlight while drinking 18 year old scotch...not a bad way to pass a night at all.  Finally, after talking and getting to know each other until the wee hours of morning we went to sleep on mattresses under the open sky - it was one of the most refreshing nights of sleep of my life.  I woke up with some of my friends to watch the sun rise over the dunes...the peace in the desert with the cool sand between your toes is magical in the pre-dawn light...you almost feel like the sun is rising just for you.

I spent two weeks acting as a Visiting Instructor at our base for Start School, which I really enjoyed.  The students were keen and capable, and I appreciate seeing the enthusiasm that people bring to the start of their careers.  Teaching is a tough job, but I really like doing it.  It makes you feel very proud when the students do well, but very disappointed when they don't; I definitely felt like I had let them down on those assessments where there seemed to be low scores across the board.  It hurts when you feel like you have failed your students.

Well, other than nearly dying during a rough landing in a sandstorm that is what I have for now from Basra.  I will try to write more over the next three and a half weeks that I will be here on this hitch.  Hopefully something exciting will happen so that I am not just writing a diary of my day.  

Sleep Deprivation and Tiny Guitars

I don't know that I am going to write everyday on this hitch, but I feel a bit like writing so here we are...I got almost no sleep last night.  It was sort of a busy production night anyway; we are in the process of drilling down through some setbacks and getting decisions made concerning how to move forward right now, so everyone out here has been working in high-gear.  I finished up right at 4am and headed back to my room, and luckily (it turns out) chose to go right to bed...fast forward to 7am and the housekeeping guy bursts into the room waking me up.  I fell back asleep...15 minutes later and here comes the laundry guy...15 minutes after that and here is the housekeeper again...then my neighbor who is a member of our security forces returned from a trip somewhere and decided to chat with someone in his room (the walls are paper-thin).  In any case, by 9am I was pretty sure that sleep wasn't going to return, but I stayed in the sack until 11am just to be sure, then went ahead and got up.  It was just a miserable way to start the day.

As a consolation, I did have some work that I could be doing to prepare for this landmark client meeting tonight, and I am getting on a blog post far earlier than usual, and I got to write in my journal, so the day certainly isn't a total wash.  Also, I was able to go and speak with the Administrative Officer regarding the room and sleeping situation, and he was able to find me a new room in the night shift trailer which will become vacant tomorrow morning, so I am moving into a quiet trailer away from the hubbub.  I also was able to get one of my Arabic-speaking crew members to write me a sign asking to please not disturb me during the day.  So, today is showing itself to be productive, if nothing else.

So, I bought a little travel guitar to bring out here, as I am really trying to finally gain some proficiency with this instrument that I have been messing around with for almost fifteen years.  It is a pretty cool little guitar, I must say. For being so small it has a pretty decent tone and a full scale length (well, ALMOST a full scale length - 24"). We will do almost anything to stay busy out here...

Where a break comes to an end and I post about it...

After a very long hiatus, I am back...I know that you have missed me.

Okay, let's hop right in, I had a pretty decent break.  I did much of what I had wanted to do, but missed some things as well...added some things too, so maybe it balances out somewhat.  I figured that today I would post a sort of photo journal of my break since five weeks is perhaps a lot to write about in a single post, and then maybe I will elaborate on individual experiences from time to time while I am out on this hitch.

Having said that, I would like to start off and talk about one trip on break in particular which was both great and also played host to the most bizarre illness of my life.  As I believe I had mentioned before I headed home, I had planned a trip with friends to New Orleans in celebration of my friend Caroline's birthday and for the two girls going to run in the Mardi Gras Marathon Relay...simple enough, right?!  The trip started off great with the four of us enjoying the company, tunes, and an open road between Houston and NOLA.  I forced everyone to stop for the traditional (only my tradition, sadly) boudin and andouille lunch at Best Stop in Scott, Louisiana.  If you have never had boudin before, but like pork (mmmm...swine!) and rice and heaven in an intestinal casing, then you MUST give it a go!  And if you are going to give it a go, you would be hard-pressed to top Best Stop for both their regular boudin and the smoked boudin (I swear it is profound).  If boudin just isn't your thing, the andouille there is also to die for, seriously, I am pretty positive that you won't find better andouille anywhere...no joke, it is THAT good.

So, we made it to New Orleans and checked into our hotel, which was nice (I almost always stay at the same hotel there)...allow me here to plug the Holiday Inn Westbank...it is clean, affordable, and literally minutes from Uptown or the French Quarter. In any case, night one took us via streetcar (followed by RTA bus as the line is being worked on) to one of my favorite restaurants in the city, Brigtsen's in the charming Riverbend area.  As expected the food was stellar, the service casual but professional, and the atmosphere and company wonderful.  Following dinner we enjoyed a couple of drinks and then headed back to the hotel for some well-deserved rest.  The next day opened with us a man down (damn you wine and beer and vodka and who knows what else) and a bit of rain.  We visited my favorite coffee shop (Tout de Suite on Algiers Pointe), went to see my family for a bit, and then over the river to walk around in the Quarter a bit.  We walked, we drank, we ate...it was great!  Eventually we were joined again by our fourth and the festivities began again...drinking, eating, looking at art, voodoo...all the good stuff that can be had in New Orleans on a Saturday afternoon. We had gotten a Groupon for a French Quarter Ghost Tour for the night (interestingly I had never been on one of these tours before even though it is my hometown), and it turned out to be pretty interesting.  I had fun, at least.

Okay, so this brings me to the strange part of the story...about the time we were fixing to head off on the ghost tour I began to develop a bit of a sore throat which became progressively worse as the night wore on. By the time we finished the tour I was genuinely in pain and NOT having a great time anymore...because the girls needed to run early in the morning anyway, we headed back to the hotel...we hadn't eaten, so when we got there the rest of the kids went to the hotel restaurant and I went straight to bed.  Well, I was freezing, so I decided to take a bath, which was super hot and awesome...Erin came in and made me move to the bed, which was about the last that I remember.  I came to in the hospital emergency room where I had been taken due to ridiculously high fever and the fact that I was hallucinating.  I don't remember anything.  I lost almost two weeks of my vacation to the lingering effects of what the doctor diagnosed as acute tonsillitis (I know that I butchered the spelling there).  WEIRDEST...THING...EVER!

So,  you didn't ask, but that was my first trip to New Orleans during my break...I went back again to help my dad sort his wine cellar for a few days, which was also great!  Perhaps I will talk more about this second trip in a future post...

Well, without further adieu, a photo journal from the break...

Final Beard Check...showered and on my way to airport!

The only 7-Star Hotel in the World...Burj Arab

Atlantis - The Palm - Amazing resort located on man-made Palm Island.

That's me...and behind me in the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world!

Huge Aquarium in Atlantis

Poseidon - God of the Sea or at least a guy sitting on his throne.

NOLA and the crew

No, seriously, alleys are totally the safest routes, particularly when named after pirates

St Louis Cathedral (center), the Cabildo (left), and the Presbytere (right) seen across Jackson Square at dusk

Seriously, this quartet started playing and guy proposed right in front of us...well-done to him!

Cafe du Monde for some beignets and cafe au lait...saxophone in the background...does it get any better?!

Haunted...seriously.

Creepy Christ shadow on the back of St Louis Cathedral

Baby Gator...the kids kept trying to get it to bite their hands to the dismay of the poor guy holding it

Brazos Bend State Park...was sort of freezing the day we went looking for alligators

Success! Alligator Number 1!

Alligator Number 2!  Sadly we didn't get a good picture of alligator number 3...but the kids sure had fun looking for them!

I think that it is a point of pride that this was the FIRST longhorn that my kids ever saw...they hated it just like their dad does...Geaux LSU!

Not sure why this is sideways, but I swear Hardie was actually enjoying himself!

I went mountain biking a couple of times

We went to the Zoo

I got cheese at the Houston Dairymaids...and got a private tour of their new storage room!!

Well, that is probably more than you needed to see or hear about, though perhaps you have missed me...I will try to write more now that I am back in Iraq where sadly nothing exciting ever happens.  Until next time...keep it classy!

Sleepless in Basra

This day has started out miserably...I didn't sleep but for an hour or two last night even though I was absolutely exhausted.  I guess part of it is nerves concerning the deliverables that we are working on right now, also probably some excitement about the impending travel back home, but mostly it was my trailer mates.  They are day shift people and just don't know how to be quiet...every one of them is a veritable bull in china shop.  From 4:30 am onward they talk and bounce and slam their doors, and stomp up and down their metal stairs...in and out all morning.  And if they aren't making it impossible to sleep the housekeeping staff is guaranteed to open the door at least twice...it doesn't matter that there is a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door.  In any case, when the housekeeper opened the door for the second time this morning at 7:45 am, I was done...I just couldn't fall back asleep.  I lay there for a couple of hours thinking about how much I wanted to be asleep, but to no avail.  So, I got up and went for a run...four miles later I came back, caught a shower, and I tried to lie back down but still couldn't sleep, so finally I just came into work.

Okay, the first paragraph is from yesterday...today has started much better with a full day's sleep, so the world looks better today.  The deliverable that you have all been listening to me complain about is basically finished, so we are looking at smooth sailing for a while out here...of course I am leaving the field in three more days, so I won't get to enjoy it too much.  Perhaps the calm will last through when I come back in five weeks or so.

So, I think that I may try to get back into indoor rock climbing while on break this time...I certainly have plenty of time for it, so why not.  I have wanted to for a long time, but was shy about heading into the gym because I had gotten so completely out of shape...so, I neither did something that I truly enjoy, climb, nor got into better shape to do all of the things that I enjoy.  It seems really stupid, right!? I thought about this senselessness a lot yesterday while I was running.  You allow yourself to get out of shape leading you to abandon some of the physical activities that you once really enjoyed...at some point you decide that you want to get back into it, but are then too embarrassed about your shape to get back into it, actually condemning yourself to remaining out of shape.  In this ways YEARS can pass, years stuck in a body that you don't relate to, don't feel comfortable with, and aren't proud of being the owner and inhabitant of.  It seems such a stupid trap, to be so frozen by fear about what others will think, the judgments that they will make about you to continue being EXACTLY the thing you think they might judge you for being...I always thought I was a stronger, more self-assured individual than that, but I guess I was wrong.  I have been doing a bit of growing lately though, as well as refocusing on making myself the person that I want to be and my life the life that i want to be leading, so I am adding this hobby back in.  I don't care that right this moment I might look a little silly trying to rock climb...I understand that i will look a little out of place, but I don't care...I enjoy it, so I will do it anyway.  And because I am going to big enough to do it anyway I eventually will look like I fit in again and will enjoy it even more as my fitness for the activity increases.

I have been reading more about living a simpler, less materialistic lifestyle lately, and I guess I have talked about it on this blog quite a bit...right now I am reading another book on the subject, and the things that it is talking about really resonate with me.  I feel like I have been asleep for the last fifteen years or so, because I KNEW this stuff when I was leaving high school, but lost touch with myself somewhere along the way.  I am almost embarrassed about it.  Not to say that the post-high school me was a great guy, because in many ways I was not...I was irresponsible, self-centered, and a bit out of control, but I knew myself, my wants for my life, and my dreams very well.  I lost touch with that deeper understanding of what I was really looking for out of this life for a long time, and I am glad to be waking back up and realizing that there is still time for the life (or a close approximation of it) that I really wanted to live...only it will be even better, as I have a family that was never anticipated by the younger me.  I obviously can't re-embrace all of the dreams and expectations of youth, as I am quite certain at this point that I will not write the great American novel, be anyone famous or of interest outside my direct social circle, and will lead a life small compared to many in the world.  It still has the potential to be the perfect life for me though...a life full of adventure, joy, experiences, love, and happiness.

So, I guess that is where I will leave it for the night, as it is getting really late to post, and I still have a lot of work left to do.  Goodnight!

A Missed Birthday...

Yesterday work just got completely out of hand, so I didn't get the opportunity to post, so I will include the post that I started yesterday and then move on to a new one after...

I slept later than usual today, so I am a bit bummed that I missed my run, but it is okay, as I am so excited that it is my daughter's birthday...she turns seven years old!  It is hard to believe that it has been so long.  I remember the night that I first discovered that I was going to be a father, and I remember the amazingly complicated emotions that I felt about it...sadly, I didn't handle the news well, not well at all, and it is something that I will forever regret.  I couldn't help it at the time; I was scared, very scared.  In retrospect though, the birth of my daughter, and my son later, stand out as the happiest experiences in my life.  I wouldn't trade being a father for anything in the world...I wrestle with the implications of having kids a lot, but  I never regret having them.  They make my world shine brighter than I ever imagined it would.

So that was yesterday...

Today opened in just as poor a way as did yesterday...for the life of me I couldn't get to sleep this morning and didn't finally fall asleep until almost nine am, so I ended up sleeping late again and missing my run...mucho frustrating.  Then, I walked into a mess in the processing shack, so I am fighting just to get back in the game.  We have an important deliverable that needs to be finished in the next couple of days which is really the impetus for most of these frustrations, so now I just hoping that once we get this item complete on time we can relax and breathe a little bit.

I am afraid that it is too busy to write more tonight, so I will post and try to get more in tomorrow.

Workers of the World Unite!

So, I awoke this afternoon to discover the camp in a state of unrest as our junior workers (primarily local employees) were apparently on strike...they had blockaded the camp and were allowing no vehicular traffic in or out of camp.  Some of the guys who were scheduled to crew change today missed their flights, and it was generally a bit tense around the camp.  The strike was completely peaceful...there were no weapons or anything, but still, the Senior Staff and Security Staff are outnumbered over three to one by junior staff.  So, our production has been off two days in a row due to civil unrest now inside our camp as well as outside of it...good times over here everyone...good times indeed.  I haven't yet heard if or when the strike will come to an end or what the terms of the cessation will be.

In other news, I ran much longer than normal today and feel really great, though due to the strike there were far more junior staff in camp during my run than are usually around.  It seems that in Iraq it is a real laugh to make fun of overweight people trying to get in shape...you run and the guys jog next to you laughing and holding their bellies. They point...they stare...they laugh...they say things to you in Arabic with huge smiles, so I am guessing they are just taking a good-natured piss with me, but who can know for sure.  But yeah...they laugh at fat people in Iraq, I have first hand experience with it...before you think that I am drawing a generalization off a single experience, this happens almost whenever I run through Junior Camp, there were just more guys pointing and laughing and holding their bellies today.  That's all right though...I will be laughing when I am running through their camp come August, sans my gut...it is fuel for my fire.  I can tell you that nothing motivates weight loss like being made fun of in a foreign country...it sucks to be exactly the stereotype that they have of the fat, white, rich American, or that is the stereotype that my Libyan friends tell me dominates.

You might be laughing now, but just wait!

So, it was an eventful day out here...two days in a row!  This is the type of drama that I was expecting when I signed on for this tour in Iraq.  I had started to think that there was no excitement left in the world...I mean you come all the way to Iraq to live on the edge of safety and risk and discover a country as tame and quiet as anywhere else I have ever been...it was a little discouraging.  I am mostly joking...I did come here with the intention of experiencing something somewhat raw, but I was not coming with the intention of placing myself in harm's way - I can't tell you how much I researched and considered and weighed the risks versus the rewards before agreeing to accept this post here.

Erin and I have been talking a bit today about budgeting...I am trying to work on paying down my debts, but I guess I have neglected building a new budget which accounts for my new expenses versus revenue.  I think that tonight I will try to take a little time while I am on shift to get a current budget written and ready to go.  I leave for home in just about a week (can you believe I have already been out here more than a month), so the timing is just right!

Speaking of home...I never thought that I would say this, but even Houston is shining like a star for me right now.  I am so excited to get home.  There is so much that I want to do...restaurants to eat at that I have missed...my weekly pilgrimage to Houston Dairymaids with friends...evening drinks at the Arms...and of course morning games with the kids!  I tell you folks, it is the little things that make life worth living, and the real trick to life is figuring out how to get yourself in a place where the little things are easier to appreciate.  I haven't figured it out yet, as anyone who has read my blog before knows...I am an absolute mess generally speaking.  I don't feel like I know up from down half of the time, but still I work on it, work on myself, and try to make sense out of what seems more and more to be a senseless world.

Well, I guess that will do it for today...keep it classy, World!