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

Erbillionaire Lifestyle

Erbillionaire Lifestyle

Shopping carts shouldn’t have 4 wheels with full freedom of rotation.  It sounds like a good idea – more maneuverability, right? – but in execution it results in your cart fishtailing.  This means that , when distracted by a burka’ed woman setting off a metal detector, the fishtailing cart can slam headlong into small child.  His parents laughed it off, but cantankerously crying brown children in a public mall is just such a hassle.

I’m in Erbil.  The best way to describe it is to start with a simple concept we can all envision and build outward from it.  Instead of starting big picture and moving in, start little picture and move out.  Why not.  That’s because it’s weird, but not as weird as I subconsciously will it to be.  It’s weird how not-weird it is.  99% of this place doesn’t scream “You’re in Mesopotamia!”  Then there’s that head-cocking moment when you remember where you are.  This is a daily phenomenon, and comes in many forms.  But we’ll get to that.   

Teach Me How to Science, Teach Me Teach Me How To Science

Erbil has the arguable pleasure of my company because I do science for a living.  This is my distal reason for being 9 hours ahead of most of my friends and loved ones.  The more proximal cause requires unfettered brandishing of that quintessentially Rusty concept, the nerdboner.  So to provide just the tip of that cerebral wedding tackle, there’s a science problem that my group solved, and I’m the most expendable person with the minimum skillset to be useful in teaching the world how to do what we do.  Same reason I was in Brazil and in the Gulf of Mexico several times.  Neat gig.

There’s a lot going on here.  Accordingly this shan’t be the last or only Iraq post.  This is an unapologetically long one though -  may need to be split up between your post-coffee and post-lunch walks across the hallway to the other office.  My goals are equal parts education, entertainment, and making sure I don’t forget any of it myself.  Enjoy. Ask questions.  Holler back.

Courtesy www.waitbutwhy.com, which is wonderful

The Kurdish Way

So.  Erbil. Erbil is the capital of the Kurdish region of Iraq.  Erbil is echelons more secure than Baghdad, Kirkuk, Tikrit, Mosul, and the rural countryside.  That’s because Kurds are their own thing, in the way that many Texans wish Texans were their own thing but aren’t because reality.  Kurds are culturally, religiously, economically and all other –ly unlike Iraqis, and unlike Arabs in general, except for a few things. The women are almost never “covered.”  The internet is not censored.  The homes are not huts.  The terrain is not desert.  The carpets are not magical.  But the public toilets are squat-and-plops, and the AK-47 makes frequent public appearances.

The Working Man's Accessory

But Erbil is trying, damn it, and Erbil wants you to know it’s trying.  For more on that, see below transcript of a conversation which is at least partially true;

“Traffic is a problem,” Say I.

But that’s a good thing!  Better roads are on their way, and what other city in the Middle East has so many trucks ferrying construction materials hither and yon?  And so many middle-class people with cars?

“This place is dirty and dusty.  It makes Lubbock look like Singapore.” But it got that way with construction detritus and commerce, not war-rubble and havoc.  We’re building, building, building. What’s a Lubbock?’

“Never mind.  There are soldiers with guns everywhere, and I’m getting frisked so much I’m starting to critique when they miss a spot.”  Yeah, but you can also go for a jog at night, walk in a mall, and see women with nice butts accentuated by spray-on jeans and heels straight from Nicki Minaj’s “other” closet.  If you weren’t such a strange person you could probably go out with one of them too. 

“I’m not strange, I just prefer blondes.”  No, you don’t have the balls to be with a Kurdish woman.

“I think they’d break me, yes.” You Americans are soft.  But please don’t leave, we need you!

While Kurdistan is technically only sort of a thing, it reeks of thingdom.  Kurdistan has its own government, its own flag, its own army (the Peshmerga) and its own oil revenue system. Kurds are a large minority in 4 different countries.  Those countries typically find them annoyingly cliquish, independent, and worst of all, prosperous and happy.  They don’t do the whole turbomuslim scene, and very proudly discuss religious tolerance, atheism, and all that Bill of Rights hoopla openly and frequently. Fun historic note - Saddam Hussein handled this cultural aberration by gassing them, killing over 200,000 Iraqi Kurds in less than a year.  The wounds from this are still fresh, and understandably border on racism. “When 20 of your family die in an hour, you do not immediately trust those responsible.  I hate Iraq and hate Iraqis.”  -A milder paraphrasing from a friend here.

Thingdom Requirement No. 1

So about those shopping carts.  Erbil isn’t weird enough.  I got off the plane and into a car.  The car was on a road.  It took me to an office, which featured no camels or bombs that I know of.  From the office I went to a two story townhome in a gated subdivision, where I was greeted by my favorite type of oilfield character, the salty old white dude.  Several of them, in fact.  We then went to the mall.  This mall featured a food court full of squiggly letters and vaguely pita things, sure.  But it also featured Polo, Clarks, a big grocery store, and a sad lack of “unique, weird Iraq shit,” which I’d promised my entire family for Christmas gifting.  Then we went home, made dinner, and the power went out.  Just to remind us that, yes, you’re still in a third world country.  But it’s trying!

Not Cool

One sadly cannot discuss this region without bringing up the pugnacious ne’er-do-wells of the area.  So here’s that part.  ISIS has murdered thousands, routinely rapes and sells into slavery any female prisoners, and aims to return the Arabian Peninsula to a proto-stone-age society of tribalism, tyranny and sheep-love.  Many banks and oilfields were hit early on, so this gang is up to their masked ears in ill-gotten gain. Sharia Law for all is their goal, enacting a literal, hyper-conservative interpretation of the Quran.  This, among other details, demotes women to subhuman status.  In some regions the current interpretation requires female circumcision of women between the ages of 18 and 45 to “discourage immoral behavior.”  They also don’t allow anyone around to be simultaneously A) not Muslim and B) alive.  They are, in short, real assholes.  

The Asshole's Connected To The...Mosul

Mosul is occupied by ISIS.  Mosul is 80km from Erbil.  Note that I said 80km, not even 80 miles.  That’s running distance for some of you. From East Dallas to West Fort Worth separates the best hope of open-minded, forward-thinking, cosmopolitan society in the region from the worst humanity has to offer.  There are refugee camps in a mostly Christian part of Erbil called Ankawa.  Thousands of “the lucky ones” escaped Mosul and the surrounding countryside to live in warehouses and trailers. I saw a lot of kids.  Peculiarly, they didn’t look lucky.  They looked like they’ve had their homes destroyed, families kidnapped et al, and their collective intestinal effluvia thoroughly frightened out of them.  One of them had a soccer ball. He wasn’t playing though.

The general consensus of everyone I’ve talked to is that this is Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, but with more at stake and no probably-gay midgets offering a jewelry loophole to conveniently solve everything. Mosul is Mordor.  The Kurds seem perfectly fine with the proffered solution of killing all the orcs.  Is it still genocide if the “people” you want to wipe off the planet abrogated their humanity?  That’s not my call, but I think I know what that kid with the soccer ball would say.

Up next, I’ll explain the choreography of this hard-hat ballet.  How does one actually do work in a place like this?  And with whom does one work?  These answers are complicated, and within the subtleties lie some truly fascinating, edifying stuff.  I love my job.

Till next time,

Shorty

All-Natural Nightmare, Part 6

“Did you realize…that you’re a champion in their eyes?”

Groggily I realized that I wasn’t dead.  More surprising still, awakening to international douchebag Kanye West’s voice on my alarm clock meant I had fallen asleep at some point in the night.  I sprung out of the tent.  It wasn’t yet light out.  The sky resembled a backlit canopy which had been viciously attacked by a holepunch. 

I spent a moment pondering life, the universe and everything.  We survived.  Mortality had been considered and our lives examined as they flashed before our eyes.  Being lost, dehydrated, then hypothermic and exposed hadn’t cost us anything permanent. 

Contrarily, it provided a gift which seems permanent.  Contemplating one’s life in movies always ends with some clown finding religion or regretting actions both undertaken and unachieved.  I never felt that way, I realized.  I doubt my companions did either.  I went into this experience as a convicted lover of science and the world around me, proud of what I’ve accomplished and knowing I’ve screwed up quite potently on multiple occasions.  Lying awake listening to my potential cause of death arcing across the sky invited me to question those characteristics, but didn’t compel me to change my mind.

I kept on pondering this while cooking breakfast and breaking down the tent.  I pondered it while we set out at dawn for base camp.  I continued doing so during our inconsiderately steep ascents and descents throughout the afternoon.  Did I really have that tv moment wherein everything makes sense and everything is messed up all at once?  When we reach base camp and hugged and laughed and yelled and limped to the store to buy ice cream, I was certain I had. 

So as we reach the conclusion to this story, one which was inevitable because, duh, I wrote it, so I must have survived, it becomes time to do conclusion-ey things.  Typically this is the time and place for broad, sweeping generalizations.  What was learned here?  How does one turn a weekend away into easily digestible facts and nuggets to put into print and feel good about?  Live your life such that if you’re trapped in a tent in a lightning storm with your friends, that you emerge from that tent as the same person.  There is no more rewarding experience than performing a potentially last-minute soul search and discovering that it’s been there all along, and that you’re totally satisfied with the product.  

All-Natural Nightmare, Part 5

Irony: īrənē

the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect

Irony is frequently misused.  Alanis Morrissette famously ruined this word in the 90’s anthem of the same name, wherein she posited rhetorically whether a number of downright awful events were “a little bit ironic.  Don’t you think?”

“No, damn it,” I’ve often ranted to imaginary Alanis, ”You’re abusing the hell out of that term.  Rain on your wedding day just sucks.  A fly in your chardonnay just sucks.  Things don’t even have to be bad to be ironic.  Read a book.”

Spa knows I feel this way.  The subject had been covered in detail at some point along the hike, in the glory days when imminent death wasn’t yet the topic du jour. But he then proceeded to point out the alleged irony of the way a lack of water had not so long ago threatened us, and we had begged aloud for rain.  His words were punctuated by a thunderclap so loud and close it could have come from inside my own head.

“Spa?”

“Yeah?”

“If we live through this, I might have to kill you for that.”

            “This is bad.”

            “Agreed.  What can we do?”

            “He needs to stay active.  Mobile. “

           “Pushups, jumping jacks, that kinda stuff?”

           “Yeah.”

           “That’s gonna look kinda funny in his underwear.”

           “Wasn’t he your pledge brother?  Didn’t you guys cover this in initial hazing?”

            “He was, but we were pussies.  We hazed like Girl Scouts.”

Schil was in a bind.  Every article of clothing was soaked through with freezing rain, including the clothes on his body, which we instructed him to remove for that reason.  To an uneducated onlooker, we seemed to want to dress the cacti surrounding the small clearing we had pegged for a campsite. 

Schil’s 165-pound, 6’4” frame, a splicing of James Franco and Ichabod Crane, lacked any insulation.  The temperature was dropping and the wind was picking up.  Hypothermia was taking hold – his hands and feet lost feeling, and he was shivering like a marital aid plugged into a car battery. 

Spa and I needed action.  And action we provided.  I tore through my camping pack and found our stove.  Thankfully my shoulders are naturally loose, or I could have pulled something while patting my own back for fixing this device the day before.  I pressurized the fuel source, lit the pilot, threw open the valve, and was greeted with the friendly roar of blue butane flames.  I poured water, our frenemy, into the small pot and silently willed it to heat faster.  I looked over at Spa to see if he could join me in being uselessly frustrated at thermodynamics, but he was busy erecting our tent.  Schil, I then confirmed, did look ridiculous doing bare-ass pushups in the middle of a National Park. 

“Schil, c’mere.” I beckoned, remembering the gravity of the situation. 

“Put this on.” My sleeping bag, due to the advice of Spa, had been wrapped in a garbage bag during the downpour.  At the time of this advice, I had ungratefully considered Spa out of his mother-loving mind for suggesting it might rain on this barren hellscape.  Oops.  The water then reached a boil, and I poured it into canteens.  These I wrapped in my own somewhat damp clothes. “And put these in there with you.” Schil thusly wound up in a sleeping bag clutching heated water bottles like Teddy Bears.

Then we ate.  And ate some more.  Finding we had additional rice leftover we then continued eating.  We were full.  We were stable.  Schil had once again not died despite our best efforts at poor camping planning.  So it was time to go to sleep.  Our alarms set for the wee hours and our minds already on the commute home, we settled into the tent to sleep off any residual bad luck. 

Then the storm came back, and any certainty we felt about our safety evaporated into the night air.

All-Natural Nightmare, Part 4

               Most people can’t tell you the last time they were afraid for their life.  They almost certainly can’t tell you the last time they willingly placed themselves in a situation of mortal peril, let alone paid for it and made tremendous effort to ensure it occurred.  But we can. 

Lying awake, helpless but for our advanced half-assed yoga knowledge, our tent somehow seemed even smaller.  The tent fit three six-foot-plus men inside of it, with sleeping bags and not much else.  At its apex, it stood four and a half feet above the ground.  Its two canvas layers were supported by a system of aluminum poles. 

“Would lightning melt the poles?” Schil asked no one in particular, as the thunder grew audibly closer.  With two friends within elbowing distance, somehow it was still clear that this question was only asked to himself. 

“Think the tent would melt onto us?  Wonder if that’ll make us harder to ID.” I semi-responded, also not expecting my query to be fielded.

Schil started to reply, but was stopped midsentence by thunder so close it could have come from one of us. 

“What’d you say?” I followed up.

“I said, just don’t decide you’re cold and need warmth right before we fry.  My parents will have enough to be sad about without wondering if we Brokeback’ed it.”

The water fundamentally changed our individual worldviews.  The mere sight of the cache from a quarter mile out replaced Spa and I’s blood with rocket fuel, Mentos and Diet Coke.  Schil couldn’t exactly move any more – dehydration and sunstroke had left him shivering, slurring, and incapable of productivity.  He rested in the shade while Spa and I nearly sprinted to the bearbox storing our treasure. 

With 5 gallons of our own water plus a few marked “free” and “yummy,” Spa and I returned to the ranchhouse.  We were in a verbal pissing contest over who was happier.  This ended in a tie when we saw the bounty of trail mix and snacks Schil had artlessly arranged on the cold dusty hardwood.  I hooked up the stove and we soon learned what it feels like to consume, in 15 minutes, 2 quarts of water, 2 packets of oatmeal and 1000 calories of trail mix.  Each. 

The demon of dehydration behind us, we decided to march onward.  The three of us are unburdened by the weight of financial inheritance, and were all looking forward to the 9 hour drive home, and work on Monday, with the same utter lack of optimism.  The more miles we crunched tonight, the more hours we could sleep Sunday.  Plus the temperature was dropping precipitously, which we welcomed.  Onward.

The arid, bleached mountain terrain gradually gave way to greener, equally frustrating mountain terrain.  Ever the optimist, Spa posited that this could mean wildlife sightings.  Ever the pain in Spa’s ass, I countered that with our luck that wildlife would be large, hungry and toothy.  He conceded.

We hiked into a canyon shallow enough that calling it a canyon could be written off on my taxes.  The hard, dirt path of the previous lifeless wasteland gave way to a thick layer of gravel, giving our calves a workout akin to playing soccer on a beach.  Kick us while we’re down, Big Bend.

And then it did.

“Wait…is that rain?”

Big Bend National Park averages about an inch of rain per month.  At the time of our visit, no celestial water had graced it for over four months.  To say we were underprepared would be to say Hitler wasn’t a big bagel guy. Schil’s clothes were exclusively cotton.  Half of mine were.  We had two garbage bags to our name and zero rain gear.  But by this time it was 2 miles back to the ranch house.  We had to push through it.

We chose poorly.  Rather than pass us by as a minor inconvenience, the storm settled on us like Pig Pen’s dirt cloud.  Worse still, once the storm zeroed in on its target, it deployed all available ordnance.  Pea-sized hail struck our necks, prompting the return of our soaked hats and bandana-cum-turbans.  Thunder threatened in the distance.  Swirling winds propelled us according to their caprices, and the temperature dropped into the low thirties.

“I don’t think the heavy stuff’s gonna come down for a while,” my attempt at Caddy Shack referencing was ignored.  Spa was busily navigating, while Schil, I soon realized, was once again busily trying not to die. 

“You ok dude?”

“Little chilly,” Schil deadpanned.

“Keep moving.  It’ll keep us warm.  We might actually have a situation here.  Hypothermia is real.  You have only cotton clothes?”

“Yes,” Schil audibly shivered.’

“Shit.”