I Kurdistan These Stupid Puns Anymore

To Those About To Read, I Salute You

In this edition, I describe the actual process of expatriating, define relatability and realism in all things, fabricate emotional depth while describing the oil industry as a whole, and make too many jokes about sheep-love.  I sincerely hope you enjoy reading this.  Thank you for your attention.

I work for an energy services company.  We are run by a mafia of middle-aged white men diabolically plotting from an offshore volcano lair.  While stroking his equally evil cat, the chairman noticed I submitted a vacation request, and the blonde babe accessory to it, and immediately began cackling with delight.

"This is just what we've been waiting for!  This young man has optimism, others are enjoying his company, and he just completed a great project for Technology.  Let's punch him in the dick!"

So it's off to the Kurdistan on 72 hours notice.  Again.

First, the backstory.  Oil is now cheap.  Saudi Arabia is executing a global economic cockblock of unprecedented proportion.  They're doing so by turning their production spigot to "wide open," flooding the market with sweet, delicious crude oil and driving the price down.  It's working.  They can do this because dinosaurs were either A) all Muslim and on pilgrimage when the meteor struck or B) assholes (not mutually exclusive). A comical proportion of the world's easily accessible oil is buried in the Saudi Sandbox.

Figure 1 - Well, Shit

As an offshoot of this, the industry has collapsed into itself like external genitalia during a Swedish Fjord plunge (sounds dirty, actually isn't). In October 2014, 38 rigs operated in the Kurdish Autonomous Region.  In October 2015, there are 3. Layoffs have been widespread and rapid. The lack of imported Scotsmen, Canadians and Aussies is accordingly conspicuous.  And you can hardly hear yourself think over the audible sighs of relief from the local sheep population.

Figure 2 - Buy Her Another Drink, Try Again in an Hour

Enter: Rusty.  Got no trained operators still on the payroll?  Send the Technology guy!

To get to Kurdyland, one has a number of options.  Note that there are no good options involving this final destination. My preference, akin to preferring rectal thermometry to slamming my junk in a window, is to fly Emirates from DFW to Dubai, then Dubai to Erbil (Irbil, Arbil).  Emirates, it seems, makes an ungodly sum of money.  They tend to provide clean, 2/3 empty planes with bottomless booze on all flights.  Their flight attendants also somehow manage to be attractive and vaguely Arabic-garment-clad, a confusing juxtaposition. It's weird, but I like it (not mutually exclusive).

To get to Dubai, you pass through the following countries' airspace: Canada, Greenland, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Romania, Iran and Syria.  This doesn't make any dad gum sense, until it does.  That's because two-dimensional maps lie to you with their East-to-West cleanliness.  On a globe, the fastest way from point A to point B doesn't give any regard to cartographic convention - look at a globe from above (as shown below) it then the "ohhhhh" will hit you.

Figure 3 - More "Oh"s Than a Box of Fruit Loops

The niftiness of this navigational trick placated and amused me for roughly ten minutes, then reality set in that I was once again going back to Kurdistan, and I drank a lot.  Drinking is good (citation needed).

Once in Dubai, I was immediately, consistently reminded that I am poor.  Dubai is a strange place.  Shopping, the national sport, dominates life.  I was honestly unaware of the variety of brands of watches, sunglasses, hookah-smoking accessories and superfluous status symbol haberdashery which existed in the world.  Thankfully they all exist in the arrival terminal in DXB, and the holes in my cultural awareness were spackled in one swell foop.

Figure 4 - Coming Soon: Character, Subtlety, Soul

Fast forward a few more meals served on trays, and I arrived in Erbil, the Las Vegas of Iraq.  An unnecessarily well-dressed and immaculately mustachioed driver greeted me and stared disapprovingly at my stained t-shirt and grey hoodie. He then escorted me to his car with the same shameful "don't judge me based on him" attitude I encountered 1,000 times while at SMU. Human worth in Kurdistan varies directly with quality of shoe leather, tightness of pants and is inversely proportional to time since last haircut.  My personal hell.

En route, he alternated between some Avicii-esque untz untz music and locally produced tunes featuring a tortured cat and some bongos.  This leads into my first Potentially Offensive, On-Point Occupational Observation (POOPOO): Music is enjoyed as a function of its specificity to the listener. This is why club music is a global fixture in clubs and dance bars - you don't actually give a rip about the music there, you want a background beat to dance and/or air hump while pretending to be interested in what some cute German girl is saying.  Most 20-somethings on this planet have heard "Levels" a thousand times because most of us are interested in pretending to care about cute German girls.  But you can only identify with details.  Avicii provides no details because none are needed.  I don't care about Kurdyland's Finest because I don't get the details.  But I LOVE  Bob Schneider because his details are like my details and I get it.  That's why I write about the details of these ridiculous trips I go on.  Because I want to be known, understood, accepted.  And only details can create this bond between share-er and share-ee.

Figure 5 - I Love This Song!

I digress.

We then arrived at the staff house, a microcosm of Kurdistan and much of the Middle East.  It was lavishly decorated, populated by oilfield expats who abused it, rotted in the foundation and infested with rodents and bugs. It also stank of unattended sewage backflow.  The ratio of effort put into the decor compared to essential structural elements, pest control, and sanitation was comical. But the chandeliers really tied the living room together.  Welcome to Erbil.

Then we worked.  Boy did we ever work.  Turns out oil is reluctant to flow from subterranean reservoirs in commercial quantity and quality (citation needed).  Whoda thunk.

This work was a constant team effort, and leads seamlessly into my second Kurdy POOPOO.  In the oil patch, the folks you work with are both the source of addiction and the support group to fight it.  No one in the world understands the life of a commuting rotation worker except other commuting rotation workers. So when we're on location, we all get it.  We're here for each other.  The witty bullshit and technical vernacular defy description, and the creative dick jokes flow like... um, like an oil well.  Sometimes.  We're the only ones who truly get each other, and when we're here, it's a big happy, diverse, shamelessly dysfunctional family.  My crew represented BFE Michigan, Basra (Iraq), Atlanta (Not Iraq but close), Romania, Libya, Nigeria, Tunisia, Malaysia, Egypt and Colombia on this hitch.  We collectively bro'ed our faces off, covering such important topics as the funniest movie title if it were actually about a vagina (Frozen, Home Alone) and whether or not it counts as peeing in the pool if there's no water in it (it does).

Figure 6, 7 - Oh My Squad

The third POOPOO came into light as a dingleberry trailing stubbornly off the second.  While rotation workers get it, and get each other, our significant others never get the same support group.  While we're away from home, we're constantly in the company of other people away from home.  Those we care about who we leave behind, however, don't get to just take a month and commiserate with folks missing their conjugate sexy pieces of dude-shwarma.  Because rotation workers tend to live in awesome places not commonly associated with the oil patch, there's no support group or meeting place.  They just go a month at a time without shwarma.  Which is awful. Oilfield WAGs have a hard gig and deserve more support and respect than they often receive.

Figure 8 - C'mon, I Had To

At the risk of trailing off into an existential description of rotational life, allow me to end on a happy conclusion.  While being far from home isn't easy, it's a growth opportunity which I encourage everyone to try.  Working with people who aren't from the "right" fraternity, neighborhood, country, or religious background is an absolute pre-req to internalizing the fact that none of those things even exist.  While missing birthdays, holidays, vacations, football seasons and volleyball games seems like the pits at times, getting covered in grease and learning how to swear in multiple languages truly is chicken soup for the soul.  It renders me appreciative of what I have, eager to spend time with loved ones, and as most of my friends know, it makes me completely full of POOPOO.

Figure 9 - ...YUP...

Thanks for reading, everyone.  See you soon.

Iraq'on There Are No More Good Puns For This Place

My Friends, My Family, and Peripherally Interested Strangers

Just when I was free to pursue real friendships, play lawn darts, live life and date cute women, Kurdistan jumped back on the radar like a recurrent cold sore.   The entire purpose of my last mission here, namely to train a replacement, was for naught when the unfortunate individual was given his marching orders recently.  Oil being cheaper than Croatian hookers isn’t good for business, it seems.   I had less than a week’s notice to get packed and get dirty for a month. But this is oil, and I am the game, I’m not “in it,” so away we go.

This morning the opposite of writer’s block hit me square in the face, as so many folks reading this surely would like to.  Unfortunately, There’s no action at the moment;  The rig is at a stand-still. My luggage hasn’t arrived so I can’t work.  I’m rocking about town with the same beloved salty oil trash I had the pleasure of meeting last trip.  But a recent Vegas excursion made me realize that pontificating with a 60% bullshit cut is a necessary life skill at times.   Accordingly, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce my cast of characters for this adventure.  I’m also planning another post about Kurdish patriotism, day-partying, underwear preferences, and probably some other mundane detail of being here that’s funny when you think about it.  So without further ado, welcome to my life.

The Cast

I.                 Introduction

To protect the guilty, and potentially keep me from being fired, the names of characters who earned descriptions have been changed.  This place is unreasonably global.  Going around the table in our morning meeting were (Not changed) Virgil, Augusto, Abderraheim, Neil Young (not kidding), Mohammad, Alejandro, and Matt.  This is just a small sampling.  At the table across from me at this writing are two Australians, a Moroccan, a Libyan and a miscellaneous gringo (likely Canadian).  They are bitterly lamenting the price of drugs and women in Thailand.  They harken back to “when times were better” with the same nostalgia I use for the original Star Wars trilogy.  This is a fully normal conversation.  HR here put its head in the oven years ago.  Things are better this way.

II.               The Whiteneck

Redneck is a common concept in the American South.  But when one hails from the Great White North a new term is compulsory.  We’ll call him Ben for now.  Ben, at 39, is the youngest grandfather I know.  His lovely Thai girlfriend is 20, his lovely daughter 19.  He refuses to provide an honest assessment of which is hotter, but I posit that it is his girlfriend.  Kudos, brother, if you’re reading this. 

The Whiteneck owns a healthy assortment of weaponry which he frequently references fondly, cementing his nickname’s veracity.  He also proudly rocks dual tat sleeves depicting his love of, and faith to, Jesus etc.  Ben possesses an uncanny ability to juxtapose his religious background and beliefs with details of his Thailand-centered party lifestyle and downright excessive use of the F-word.  This creates a consistently humorous environment, and his refusal to acknowledge the comical nature of the situation contributes to it still more.  He just doesn’t get why that’s funny.

Ben is a top-notch drinking partner who is as giving as he is absurdly fit.  He’s quick to educate, to admit when he’s wrong, and has been nothing but generous.  Thanks, Ben, for working with me. When you read this, please don’t hurt me.

III.              Neil F*cking Young

Kindly disregard my earlier efforts to change names.  This one couldn’t be done.  NFY’s actual name is Neil Young.  I first met this gentleman via email, and immediately wondered if a pun or an oblique “Old Man” reference were appropriate.  I was then frozen with fear that he’d be musically inept, or a ripped black guy, or a Swedish woman, or any other demographically awkward situation that’d make him similar to Michael Bolton in Office Space.

Upon meeting the man, I’m thrilled to confirm my initial suspicions of “totally embracing it” are spot-on.  He’s a 50-odd year old Aussie who married a hot Russian woman and now resides in Moscow.  He’s lived all over the world, is paid roughly $1500 per day to be here, and hasn’t worn a shirt to work yet that didn’t feature the New Orleans Jazz Festival in some way.  His casual shoes are Chucks.  His ponytail is Sampson-esque and his teeth appear to have been recycled from the “before” pictures in Crest commercials.  This man is, in short, a total gem.  We will party.  It will be good.

IV.              The Consultant

The Consultant, being a crazy dutch bastard, goes by the moniker Von Hoodwink.  Rarely have I met a man so intent on talking me into his line of work, and rarely have I met a man with more convincing arguments.

“I travel constantly.  I work when I want to.  This year, I have made a shitload of money.  I’m not married but I have a partner.  I only leave work when she insists on screwing me, or when my friends want to ride motorcycles in Spain.”

Touche, Von Hoodwink.  He snores like an atomic chainsaw and laughs like he’s choking, which is possible.  He also helped me carry in groceries and I have yet to produce a foul one-liner, chauvinistic comment or clever derogatory pun which he hasn’t said himself before.  He is, in a word, my hero.  We talk.

V.               The King

We’ll call The King Sinbad.  He’s from the North African former pirate-haven of Tripoli and, like the rest of these clowns, has worked all over the world.  

Sinbad effortlessly maneuvers conversations between socio-political analysis of the Middle East to our corporate limitations to the price and quality of Hashish in various Spanish cities.  Barcelona, I’m told, is where it’s at.  His oilfield knowledge is rivalled only by his capacity to drink like a fish with a drinking problem and still perform the next day.  All waitstaff and bartenders at the local watering hole know his name, rank and homeroom number.  Sinbad’s first three drinks are always free because his last ten always aren’t.  Sinbad is my friend here, has taught me more about well testing and life in general than most anyone else, and has made the cut of “people I work with who I email funny shit to that isn’t work related.”  A trip to North Africa under his supervision would come close to killing me, but in a productive manner.    Sinbad is the man.

VI.              The cute, intelligent, technically savvy, artistically inclined, somehow unmarried female who is also nice to animals

She works on the same shift as the Tooth Fairy, Santa Clause, and the central spiritual figure of one of the religions you, the reader, do not subscribe to.  Back to reality.

VII.            Outroduction

These are obviously only a few of the gems I get to associate with on this trip. While it’s impossible to select just a few people here as a truly representative cross section, the effort to do so produces an interesting common vein.  That common vein is this: stop being so damn linear.

Living in a big city chocked full of college grads with degrees and dreams makes you forget stuff.  Namely, it makes you forget there are other ways to make a living than the 8-5 MF grind that gives you two weeks off and a lame Christmas party every year.  There’s more to life.  Adventurous careers and entrepreneurial actions are the lifeblood out here, and I drank deeply of the nectar.  These folks love problem-solving, are team-oriented to the end, and between them have more passport stamps than Madonna’s naughty bits.  Many of them were dirt poor before they figured it out, and that desperation forged what we see today. Most importantly, the expats and consultants here in Kurdistan are, by and large, really, really, sincerely happy with their lives.  And that’s worth more than a couple Croatian hookers.   

Till next time,

Kurdy

Iraq. Eye Roll. It's All. I Know.

I was in Erbil.  Then it got real.  

City of Dreams

I’m now on location, patiently waiting my turn to contribute to the engineering orgy that is an exploratory oil well.

The territory southeast of Kirkuk is an unspeakably beautiful topographic smorgasbord.  It’s a very real battleground (more on that later) and safety here is obtained only through constant surveillance and a troop of well-paid folks with guns. There are 35 armed personnel here, 5 bomb shelters, seismic devices to detect approaching heavies, and emergency escape vans we can all fit into.  We’re encouraged not to go outside the fence, gently encouraged, because this was a minefield 40 years ago. Our client requires me to tote a Go-Bag “in case shit

Nowhere near Kansas anymore

gets really, really real and you have to leave, like right now.”  But we’ll get to that in a pinch. I just wanted to start in media res for once, and to use “in media res” correctly in context.  Swish.

This post will describe in not-too-much-detail the recent goings-on in this corner of the world, as seen by your protagonist; a textbook middle child semi-ginger board game enthusiast.  Especially checkers.  For this post there will be no goofy theme or funny rhetorical device.  Mostly facts, with the occasional half-baked opinion (HBO).  These will all be absurd enough in their own right. I apologize (insincerely) for the scatterbrained nature of the information.  There’s SO MUCH to talk about.

Casual

Two and a half weeks have passed since Iraq got its blonde back.  I was pulled kicking and screaming from a wonderful Colorado vacation because Erbil base “urgently needed my attention.”  I should have smelled the BS from Keystone – I’m not that important! Turns out the “urgency” was our client offering to pay my employer $2,000 per day to have me on standby.  There was no real “urgency” per say, but rather an opportunity my bosses couldn’t turn down.  Ergo, here am I.  To answer what should be your first question, no, that $2,000 doesn’t go anywhere I can see it.  But it does make me more resistant than most to layoffs.  So, hey.  Perk.

Need a Wahala?  Well, holla!

The first few days blew by in a flurry of intensity.  My equipment finally stumbled in, tardy and unapologetic, probably drunk. It arrived with a handful of “wahalas,” Nigerian oilfield slang for problems.  Solving these caused several other wahalas to spring into existence.  In fact this entire base camp is essentially a wahala manufacturing plant operating at unheard-of efficiency and well within six sigma guidelines.  Nothing is easy.  There are no proper hand tools. It’s even BYO fork for lunch.  We usually clean our hands with Windex and eat cup-o-noodles out of washed-out hardhats.  I’m not kidding.

Assembled with love, dedication, duct tape

Performing any meaningful work here is, accordingly, almost impossible. It requires constant MacGyvering.  HBO: you will rarely see more effective or determined problem-solvers than in the oil and gas field-operator community.  It’s a finely honed skill from years of knick-knack wahalas cropping up.  Rule #1 is “no whining.” Rule #2 is “no buying new stuff.”  Rule #3 is “employ safety measures in accordance with the number of people watching and their rank relative to your own.”  Following this Code of Hammer-abi (anyone get the joke?), we proceed to provide the world with energy.

Not Pictured: Bow Tie

So we solved everything.  All our widgets went together.  Eventually, no wahalas and everything is koko (Context clues, figure it out).  HBO, the coolest part of this MacGyver mentality is that it can, will and does translate into “real” life.  No matter the origin of a particular wahala – relationship, car, financial, job, external genitalia causing difficulty jogging – this caste doesn’t waste time self-pitying, whining or posting to Facebook about it.  The mental flowchart goes from “observe wahala” directly to “solve wahala.”  Most of us mere mortals sandwich a third or fourth or fifth step(s) into the process.  Sometimes the sandwich is open-faced and we never make things koko, content to wallow and get attention.  That’s just not how it works out here.  I love this.  I’m trying to make it my own.  To observe progress, remain at least peripherally interested in my life.  Let me know how I’m doing.

My equipment was assembled, tested, green-tagged, boxed up and had bow-ties on it.  We cleaned up after ourselves, ordered spare parts for future work, and helped our buddies finish too.  We had, officially, nothing to do.  This resulted in excessive movie-watching, pushup contests, cutting up, loss of sanity due to cabin fever, and clever one-liners leading up to or immediately following passing of gas (“Speak, toothless one!”).  I learned some Arabic, some Kurdish, some Scottish.  HBO: Scottish isn’t English. 

This is a handy opportunity to talk about Islam and Middle Eastern culture.  The two are inseparable, so when I say one I mean both.  My buddy Mohanad is an incredibly kind person, and the thought of him hurting a fly is laughable.  He practices Salafin Sunni Muslim, which is also what ISIS claims to rep.  His contempt for them, as you can imagine, is obvious.  Mohan hails from Libya.  His chin hides under a big ole Muslim beard.  This is a problem on locations with H2S, which all reservoirs in this region are blessed with.  One must shave to wear a respirator or H2S can kill you.  But Mohan is a super-duper Muslim and won’t do it… so he got himself fired.  When queried, he told me that when Ghaddafi was in charge in Libya he was arrested for his beard, went to jail, and still wouldn’t shave it.  I asked about his 3 kids under age 5, and the feeding plan therefor.  He said he’d figure something out.  I opted out of the conversation, confident I’d say something stupid and/or offensive otherwise.  Much as I will now do with this paragraph…let’s move along.

South Kurdistan

The cabin fever crisis soon abated.  Our esteemed client decided it needed the sampling crew on site immediately if not sooner.  This represented another thematic element of this experience – everything is urgent, but nothing happens quickly.  Two days after our summoning, I was on the road.

And oh, what a road.  My Personal Security Detail (PSD) picked me up at 0600.  A PSD is a badass armored up 4x4 with military goodies, including our friend the AK-47, all in the cabin.  We took the long way through Sulaymaniah (“Suly”) because Kirkuk was under attack by ISIS.  Fun details on this situation you won’t see in the news:

   1.      There were 5 ISIS attacks on the same day, spaced hundreds of miles apart, to distract from Peshmerga activity in Syria, where they’re rocking ISIS’ world at the moment

   2.      The attack in Kirkuk nearly succeeded in its goal.  The goal was to surround the city and choke it off.

   3.      Peshmerga repelled the ISIS forces, after initially retreating, with help from US air cover. 

   4.      Over 100 Pesh casualties.  ISIS casualties unknown, estimated to be double that.

   5.      After killing a man, ISIS will sometimes sell his captured wife and children.  The going rate for a Muslim adult woman fluctuates between $100-$150.  Children are more expensive.

   6.      The best website for information on this is www.basnews.com

So we took the long way around that whole chestnut. 

More Southern Kurdistan

The scenery during this trip had a New Zealand-ey way of being impossible to photograph adequately, no matter the setting on my Samsung Spacephone.  The northern part could have been Colorado or Wyoming, featuring snow-capped mountains watching over meandering rivers and cities popping up out of nowhere.  A troupe of singing dwarves marching to fight Smaug would have fit right in. The scenery in no way resembled the product of erosion and techtonics, but rather the work of a passive-aggressive juvenile with two left hands and a spliff playing SimWorld. At no time did I think “oh yeah, I’m in Iraq, of course it looks like this.” 

As we made it further south, the huge mountains and river-bestowed greenery gave way to more precisely carved badlands and rolling hills, like that juvenile quit digging with a backhoe and started using an ice cream scoop and a 12-gauge.  New Zealand turned into Big Bend, where the land is more intimidating than awe-inspiring. The scattered big cities of southern Kurdistan gradually gave way to isolated small villages and cinderblock huts; more stereotypical Iraqi real estate.  As the geographical and geopolitical turn became more obvious, the driver and his assistant loaded their AK’s and passed me a helmet and flak jacket.  I’m still not kidding.

Finally, 11ish hours after we left home sweet home in Erbil, we pulled up to the rigsite.  Think Rivendell, the good guy stronghold from LOTR.  This compound does not fit gently into the nooks and crannies of an unforgiving, rugged environment.  It is carved into said environment.  Acres of mountainside are cleared and levelled for the massive rig itself, the access road, the security stations, and the living quarters.  It’s like a petroleum theme park.  HBO -  after the trouble we had just getting our tiny convoy to the rigsite, the thought of any military force getting to us and surprising us is a big enough stretch that I rest easily at night.

Welcome to Petro-World!

The Welcoming Committee

Well-Testing Toys

It's like a themed motel!

One lives in a trailer here.  I’m lucky, I have a single.  It’s roughly the size of my bedroom in Dallas, but the toilet doesn’t flush right and is 6 feet as the crow flies from my head when I’m sleeping.  Instead of the near-silence I’m accustomed to sleeping in, as my roomie situation at home is excellent, I get to sleep with the scratch-scratch-scratch of a rat living somewhere up in the ceiling of my little hut.  HBO: Unlike the mouse who lived in my room in Erbil, Freddie, this rat is neither adorable nor worth anthropomorphizing a name to.  He’s just a little shit. We need a rigsite cat.

Yep.  Who wants to touch me?

So the daily grind involves working out creatively, walking down to the rigsite intermittently to lend a hand and drink in the absurd engineering scope of it all, and ingesting food completely unfit for human consumption.  Weight loss is guaranteed by physics: mass out>mass in, closed system. Because my part in this production is still a ways off, I’m not swamped with work presently. The Brazilians call this gallo – waiting on the rig for your turn to go.  If you’re an innately productive person, it’s great.  I’ve read 5 books, watched too many movies, solved the rubik’s cube and paid rent.  It’s not so bad.  I can see how some people go crazy in such a situation though.  Minimal internet.  Unchanging scenery.  No babes.  Malfunctioning toilets.  Sets the scene for a bad horror movie when someone snaps.

RussFit, First Month Free!

My favorite part of the whole experience is that I can feel the growth coming on.  As of this writing I’ve spent 43 days in the field.  I miss my friends and family.  I lost touch with a lot of people I care about, and that part’s hard.  I’m a sucker for socializing.  However, there are plenty of upsides. This is not something I can post pictures of on Facebook and tell a couple whopper stories at happy hour, then it’s done.  It’s way better than that.  I’ve finally adapted to this as a situation normal, rather than an aberration.  You don’t grow up much on a whirlwind party trip to the Hamptons.  But this experience?  Game-changer. I get to take this with me. That means I’ll come back home a more koko dude.  More wahala-tolerant, more empathetic, conversationally fluent in Scottish, and probably emaciated due to malnutrition.  Plus I can see my hair for the first time since college.  Good vibes only.  Carry on.

Overwhelming Realness

Stay tuned for updates.  Thanks for reading.  I miss you.  Write me sometime, whoever you are, wherever you are. 

As-Salaam Alaykum,

Kurdy

Talk Kurdy To Me

Congratulations!

Don't Read The Fine Print :)

If you’re reading this, then you’ve accepted the offered position of Technology Development Engineer for Huge Global Energy Services Company.  This document will detail what you can expect here. Welcome aboard!

During the interview process we told you that you’d have a nice office, cool people to work with, a lab with all manner of spare parts and fully stocked tool kit.  You’d work reasonable hours in a nice little town. Cute girl or two down the hall. Not engineer cute but actual cute. Also decent coffee. Well, don’t get attached.  You said you liked travel and field experience too so we’re sending you to Kurdistan.  Here’s a general-purpose heads up for the next few weeks of your life.

You’ll arise at 0530.  You do this because we threaten to pick you up at 0630, and once weekly the bus will be on time.  We will schedule this aberration in such a way as to cause you maximum inconvenience, ie, the one time you hit snooze and audibly whisper “I’ll be fine.”  On the way to work, in this junked out minivan, you will listen to the driver’s choice of music.  This might be “Babylon Radio, where we play the hits!” which will treat you to seeing the reactions of your salty oilfield expat badass coworkers to “First things first, amareallis.” Or it might be snake-charming music with a drum kit and vocals that sound like Celine Dion ate a clarinet.  Coin flip.

This Is Not Your Ride

After your 30 minute commute full of personal reflection time (Two Dots, Looney Tunes Dash, Flow free version) you will arrive at Parpitan Base.  It’s a god-forsaken shit-heap (GFSH). The van will be searched by a man with an AK-47 and an I-can-see-up-your-skirt mirror on a stick.  For bombs.  You will sign in, your bag will be searched and you will be frisked.  You will think it’d be funny to vent trapped intestinal gasses mid-frisk, just a real high-pitched squealer you could tune a trumpet to, but innate courtesy and sheer terror will silence your otherwise ebullient sphincter.   You will see women walk past without being frisked.  Muslim culture prohibits men from searching them.  But that’s ok: women are obviously incapable of smuggling weapons or being dangerous because Middle East Logic.

After turning the generators on to give the GFSH delicious electricity, you will need to promptly check emails and such things.  The power works with the same drive and dedication as the current American Legislature, which is to say it works poorly.  Expect 3-5 outages per day at the GFSH and one more at the staff house later. The situation normal regarding internet is similar, but less optimistic.  You will see this pattern repeated by many of your Iraqi co-workers, particularly those in logistics and procurement.  Yes, they are employed in the same company as you.  Yes, we know they are as useful to your operation as mesh condoms.  We keep them there to taunt you.  Next question?

You will then walk back to your mobile lab, also known as your Sampling Container.  Here you will science your face off.  You will spend day after day learning, building and testing equipment which is not specifically in your job description.  Welcome to the field.  We don't have enough people for everyone to only do that thing they said they can do. Specialization, shmecialization.  If it doesn’t work, make it work.  If you don’t have the specific whatsamajigger you need, improvise.  This will occur often, as Parpitan Base has a downright comical lack of basic hand tools, crossovers and fittings, but a curious overabundance of electric tea kettles.  Anyway, there is no expert to call in to solve problems for you.  You are that expert.  You should find this knowledge equal parts intimidating and empowering. Lots of people are trusting you on this.  We believe in you.  Don’t fuck up. 

Home Is Where Your Stuff Is

Absorbed in your desperate hurry to learn equipment before anyone realizes you’re actually pretty new to it, you’ll converse rarely with the local team.  Perhaps if they were to offer a hand in your work, or even be physically present where work occurs, the situation would differ.  That'd be nice. On the rare occasions that conversation with the locals occurs, you’ll be shocked at how eager they are to kiss your butt until it sparkles, to badmouth each other behind said “other’s” back, and to generally behave like children.  Additionally, Kurdish is an abrasive, gravelly language.  Kurdish Pillow Talk will never be a thing.  No sexy blonde woman will ever request you to “Talk Kurdy to me.”  Accordingly, don’t bother learning any.  In some countries you’re thrilled and intrigued by the local friendliness, work ethic and language.  This is not one such locale.

That said, you can't help but learn that “Inshallah bokram malesh” is the answer to any question regarding work to be done.  Although Arabic, not Kurdish, it is as ubiquitous in Erbil as cold sores in the Eastern European club scene. Literally translated this means “God willing, maybe tomorrow.”  In practice it means “Maybe it’ll get done, but I won’t work harder to accomplish this, and you may go eat sand.” This phrase will occur every single time work, planning or logistics are discussed.  It’s frankly a miracle anything gets accomplished in this neck of the woods.  And by “miracle,” of course, we mean “the result of an influx of ex-pat personnel familiar with capitalism and western management styles.” 

Bro, Do You Even Science?

So onward you’ll go, preparing your equipment and learning about this business which intrigues you so.  And oh, how you’ll learn.  It’s a good thing you love learning.  That class you just studied for hours and hours – Drilling Engineering, en route to your Master’s – is comically inadequate.  You know what cementing and liners and casing are, for instance.  Good for you.  But do you know what to do when a 5” liner packer has a questionable seal due to a non-retracted reamer arm during POOH, and total fluid losses occur during RIH of said liner, but POOH to correct this would require a week of NPT laying down singles so your client decides to cement via stinger anyway, and then you have 700psi and climbing standpipe pressure AFTER the slurry hardens?  How would you even BEGIN to perf-and-squeeze above the theoretically producing zone, pending the CAS-CBL doesn’t tell you that your bottom cement isn’t worth a hoot to begin with? Plus how do you cope with or prevent hard hat hair?  And so on.

The food in Kurdistan will be delicious.  Your once-weekly trip to the mall for groceries will enthuse you, as it offers an opportunity to spend your entire per diem at the food court in a strictly point-and-wave-money fashion.  No one there speaks English.  The grocery store is the epitome of domestic grocery storedom, disappointingly, but the food court offers the kind of strange foreign deliciousness that made Christopher Columbus do his thing in 1492. You will eat too much, caught up in the wonder of it all, and take pictures of your food like a white girl. 

Biological Terrorism

Delicious Lunch Treat

Do not attempt to repeat this mass-eating in truly local establishments.  This could happen, say, during your trip to Ankawa after visiting a machine shop.  Truly local food will leave you with a gastro-intestinal festival rivalling the chemical weapons which Saddam Hussein scorched the region with decades ago.  It will render you akin to a Celiac’s Disease sufferer who judged a county bake-off and accepted payment in Busch Light from a garden hose.  You will frantically google whether it’s medically possible to excrete one’s brains through the digestive tract.  It’s not.  But miracles happen every day.

That means you'll poop a lot.

        Don't let the above negative details, comically presented for our enjoyment, deter you from this.  This will be the kind of trip you'll tell your grandchildren about.  You will meet and work with a truly global workforce.  You'll return to your colleagues in a position of potentially being able to teach something.  Your ability to defy HR-established behavior will soar, and you'll be reminded of the global connectivity of all mankind.  Good vibes, right? But seriously, go easy on local chow.  Could be a game-changer.

        You are now prepared for your trip to Kurdish Iraq.  You’ll figure out the rest; such as non-google-able cultural minutiae, the coolness of oilfield commuters, the appeal of the gypsy lifestyle, and how to wear coveralls all day without chafing.  Bring more work clothes than you think you need, the laundry service takes a week. Hang with your Russian and Nigerian teammates often.

Good luck, no bomb jokes, and make us proud!

Nope.  Not Even A Little One

Sincerely,

Human Resources, Huge Global Energy Services Company