While there are dozens of amazing insults and insights that I endure every day, as do we all, none of them rise to the level of blog-worthy. While I am training a new puppy, and he is of course the most amazing, smart, and naughty puppy that ever existed, nothing there is really blog-worthy either. Although he does have a very amusing obsession with socks.
After several years at this, I should be able to find a kernel of something to write about on a semi-regular basis. But I am unable to find either the energy or the kernel.
Oh, I could drone on and on about minutiae of innervation of the small mammal head or about how my younger peers confuse kindness in an instructor with competence. Or about how it took me three days and multiple attempts at my taxes to figure out the pathway that was most favorable to me. Or about how I am wringing my hands over what snacks to bring to class on Thursday that will satisfy the vegans, gluten-frees, and other freaky food-o-phobes in class in addition to pleasing the largest number of the rest of us.
In sum, vet school is sucking all desire out of me to sit in front of a computer screen unless I am studying.
Still, there are glimmers.
Archie is quickly mastering hand signals for down, the obedience "around" command, coming up to my indicated side from a sit-stay or while moving, recalls in general (god, he's a stubborn little terrier), running with me (not ahead of me or biting or jumping at my hand), and verbal commands for turning left and right. I've never taught any dog a solid right or left verbal command. It should be interesting.
And Archie starts class in two weeks. Hopefully that will provide some training hijinks that I can write about.
And this interminable term draws to a close in just a couple of weeks (plus finals week after that). Spring break won't be nearly long enough, I'm afraid.
Showing posts with label Aramco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aramco. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Saturday, July 31, 2010
To Go Where No Man Has Gone Before...
I just finished watching the new "Star Trek" movie for the second time in just a few days (it's cycling around on my cable network). I saw it in the theater in the states a couple of times last summer as well.
I think this is one of the most awesome movies I've ever seen. I could quite happily watch it again. And again.
Perhaps I should explain. I am a scientist, and I hope that you understand that I mean that in a very old-fashioned sense. If this were the 19th century, I'd say I am a naturalist. There is very little natural history that I don't follow at least on a dilettante level: biology (flora and fauna), genetics, evolution, medicine, geology, physics, chemistry, math, engineering...I read in wide swaths across the technical and lay literature of all of these fields.
And I can tell you with absolute confidence and a straight face that "Star Trek" is responsible for my profligate embrace of the world of science.
No, not the 2009 movie, but the original TV series.
My brother and I would rush home from school so that we could watch "Star Trek" every day. We of course had no idea then that the show was in syndicated reruns by that point. We were totally absorbed, consumed, by every nuanced and heavily overacted scene. This was the world of the future! We inhabited that world alongside Jim, Bones, Spock, Sulu, et al.
"Star Trek" utterly shaped my view of the world, of the universe, and of what a scientist should and could be--an explorer, a seeker, a risk taker, an adventurer. Spock was always my personal hero.
The "Star Trek" movie that came out last year has to be one of the most magnificent prequels ever devised. Gradually linking in every major character, sketching three-dimensional backstories in just a few minutes, and setting us up for the TV series, the movie is a two-hour homage. You know the red-uniformed guy is going to get killed first. "Cap'n, I'm givin' it all she's got!" "Jim, I'm just a doctor!" Even the sound effects created in the 21st century echo the best of the 1960's. To the great satisfaction of even the most die-hard Trekkie, the movie didn't leave out a single cliche or cultural meme.
And let's not dance around this: in the movie, the young Spock is totally hot. Awesomely and totally hot. In a cerebral, Vulcan sort of way, of course, but still, totally hot.
This week I'm delivering a new course that I built called "Petroleum Geology for Engineers", designed to give production, drilling, and reservoir engineers at Saudi Aramco some idea of what petroleum geology is and how it is practiced in this company (I use the word "company" loosely; Aramco is not a company but a branch of the Saudi government; but as they say, that is a whole 'nother rant for another day). I will spend this week in front of a group of 20+ young Saudi engineers, suspicious of me from the get-go because I am a westerner, even more so because, god forbid, Allah help them, I'm a woman. Still, let's not lose sight of what is important.
If I can infuse them with even a tiny spark of the same excitement that infuses geologists at Aramco, then I am indeed "going where no man has gone before."
I could do far worse than trying to follow in Spock's footsteps.
I think this is one of the most awesome movies I've ever seen. I could quite happily watch it again. And again.
Perhaps I should explain. I am a scientist, and I hope that you understand that I mean that in a very old-fashioned sense. If this were the 19th century, I'd say I am a naturalist. There is very little natural history that I don't follow at least on a dilettante level: biology (flora and fauna), genetics, evolution, medicine, geology, physics, chemistry, math, engineering...I read in wide swaths across the technical and lay literature of all of these fields.
And I can tell you with absolute confidence and a straight face that "Star Trek" is responsible for my profligate embrace of the world of science.
No, not the 2009 movie, but the original TV series.
My brother and I would rush home from school so that we could watch "Star Trek" every day. We of course had no idea then that the show was in syndicated reruns by that point. We were totally absorbed, consumed, by every nuanced and heavily overacted scene. This was the world of the future! We inhabited that world alongside Jim, Bones, Spock, Sulu, et al.
"Star Trek" utterly shaped my view of the world, of the universe, and of what a scientist should and could be--an explorer, a seeker, a risk taker, an adventurer. Spock was always my personal hero.
The "Star Trek" movie that came out last year has to be one of the most magnificent prequels ever devised. Gradually linking in every major character, sketching three-dimensional backstories in just a few minutes, and setting us up for the TV series, the movie is a two-hour homage. You know the red-uniformed guy is going to get killed first. "Cap'n, I'm givin' it all she's got!" "Jim, I'm just a doctor!" Even the sound effects created in the 21st century echo the best of the 1960's. To the great satisfaction of even the most die-hard Trekkie, the movie didn't leave out a single cliche or cultural meme.
And let's not dance around this: in the movie, the young Spock is totally hot. Awesomely and totally hot. In a cerebral, Vulcan sort of way, of course, but still, totally hot.
This week I'm delivering a new course that I built called "Petroleum Geology for Engineers", designed to give production, drilling, and reservoir engineers at Saudi Aramco some idea of what petroleum geology is and how it is practiced in this company (I use the word "company" loosely; Aramco is not a company but a branch of the Saudi government; but as they say, that is a whole 'nother rant for another day). I will spend this week in front of a group of 20+ young Saudi engineers, suspicious of me from the get-go because I am a westerner, even more so because, god forbid, Allah help them, I'm a woman. Still, let's not lose sight of what is important.
If I can infuse them with even a tiny spark of the same excitement that infuses geologists at Aramco, then I am indeed "going where no man has gone before."
I could do far worse than trying to follow in Spock's footsteps.
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Shaybah
Last month I took a trip to the Shaybah Field located in far SE Saudi Arabia just on this side of the border with UAE.
I am working on a much longer post about this field but I haven't posted many pictures lately and almost never post any of myself anyway. Since I had this one, I thought I'd slap it up for your viewing pleasure.
Friday, April 02, 2010
My Job
I haven't written much about my job. It's complicated and I have been thinking about how to succinctly describe what I do.
I am a direct hire of a new administrative unit in Aramco called UPDC, Upstream Professional Development Center. We are within the Exploration Division, the other large division in the company being Production, of course. Upstream refers to all of the activities that take place up to the point that hydrocarbons enter a processing facility. Upstream does include production but the Production Division is more concerned with all of the processing, manufacturing, and transport of products than in getting hydrocarbons out of the ground. It's a somewhat artificial division in a fully integrated, national oil company like Aramco.
UPDC was created to build an industrial training program for all upstream technical professionals: drilling engineers, production engineers, reservoir engineers, petrophysicists, geologists, geophysicists, and facilities engineers. In the past, training was managed separately by each group. There was a lot of overlap, gaps, and inefficiencies. Getting all of those groups to agree on shared training objectives is a gigantic pain in the ass and fortunately I don't have to worry about that.
My job role is SME, Subject Matter Expert (my job title is Geologist I). I am responsible for working with representatives from the line organizations (mainly the various exploration and reservoir characterization geological groups) to help determine what training they want new hires to have and what courses could be built or bought to provide that training.
The new hires are specifically young Saudis who were selected when they were in high school to be PDPs. Those who are smart or whose families are royal or well connected are sent to universities in the US, UK, Europe, or Australia. Others are sent to one of the two KSA universities. They get bachelor's degrees in geology and return to KSA with a guaranteed job with Aramco. They need quite a lot of training to prepare them for their jobs--although this is a bit of a paradox since they could actually do fuck-all for their entire career and never get fired. One of our tasks besides training them is get them excited about actually performing their job duties, and to want to excel in their jobs.
UPDC has some particular requirements for its training courses--no "death by Powerpoint" or droning, hours-long brain dumps by experts. Courses have to be more than 50% activity or exercise based. All exercises have to use Aramco/KSA data. Sounds simple but that means that most commercial courses have to be Aramco-ized before delivery. And nearly all experts in and out of Aramco are used to the old school way of doing it: stand up and lecture for three or four days straight, then have them look at some data.
For the past several months I have been building the Geology Flagship, a two-week course that is the first technical course the PDPs will receive in their training program. I have literally been building this course from the ground up. It has been an immensely consuming effort. Some content I researched and wrote myself. For other modules, I got content from experts in Aramco and rewrote and built exercises for. And for yet other modules, I had experts build their own damned exercises. (Can you tell I'm getting tired of building exercises?) I will deliver most of the two weeks of material (starting May 8) but for some specialized modules, those carefully selected experts will deliver their own stuff.
For me to learn Saudi Arabian geology and find useful, willing experts throughout the company in only five months has been a tremendous effort. And this is just ONE course out of about 10 that need to be developed in the next few months. Thankfully, I only need to help build a couple of them and oversee the building of the rest.
With constant evergreening of courses and development of new ones as needed, there is work here to keep me busy for years.
I am a direct hire of a new administrative unit in Aramco called UPDC, Upstream Professional Development Center. We are within the Exploration Division, the other large division in the company being Production, of course. Upstream refers to all of the activities that take place up to the point that hydrocarbons enter a processing facility. Upstream does include production but the Production Division is more concerned with all of the processing, manufacturing, and transport of products than in getting hydrocarbons out of the ground. It's a somewhat artificial division in a fully integrated, national oil company like Aramco.
UPDC was created to build an industrial training program for all upstream technical professionals: drilling engineers, production engineers, reservoir engineers, petrophysicists, geologists, geophysicists, and facilities engineers. In the past, training was managed separately by each group. There was a lot of overlap, gaps, and inefficiencies. Getting all of those groups to agree on shared training objectives is a gigantic pain in the ass and fortunately I don't have to worry about that.
My job role is SME, Subject Matter Expert (my job title is Geologist I). I am responsible for working with representatives from the line organizations (mainly the various exploration and reservoir characterization geological groups) to help determine what training they want new hires to have and what courses could be built or bought to provide that training.
The new hires are specifically young Saudis who were selected when they were in high school to be PDPs. Those who are smart or whose families are royal or well connected are sent to universities in the US, UK, Europe, or Australia. Others are sent to one of the two KSA universities. They get bachelor's degrees in geology and return to KSA with a guaranteed job with Aramco. They need quite a lot of training to prepare them for their jobs--although this is a bit of a paradox since they could actually do fuck-all for their entire career and never get fired. One of our tasks besides training them is get them excited about actually performing their job duties, and to want to excel in their jobs.
UPDC has some particular requirements for its training courses--no "death by Powerpoint" or droning, hours-long brain dumps by experts. Courses have to be more than 50% activity or exercise based. All exercises have to use Aramco/KSA data. Sounds simple but that means that most commercial courses have to be Aramco-ized before delivery. And nearly all experts in and out of Aramco are used to the old school way of doing it: stand up and lecture for three or four days straight, then have them look at some data.
For the past several months I have been building the Geology Flagship, a two-week course that is the first technical course the PDPs will receive in their training program. I have literally been building this course from the ground up. It has been an immensely consuming effort. Some content I researched and wrote myself. For other modules, I got content from experts in Aramco and rewrote and built exercises for. And for yet other modules, I had experts build their own damned exercises. (Can you tell I'm getting tired of building exercises?) I will deliver most of the two weeks of material (starting May 8) but for some specialized modules, those carefully selected experts will deliver their own stuff.
For me to learn Saudi Arabian geology and find useful, willing experts throughout the company in only five months has been a tremendous effort. And this is just ONE course out of about 10 that need to be developed in the next few months. Thankfully, I only need to help build a couple of them and oversee the building of the rest.
With constant evergreening of courses and development of new ones as needed, there is work here to keep me busy for years.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Poo Delivery
This past Monday I flew to Houston for an orientation at Aramco Services Company. The main part of the day was spent with a former expat's wife who gave several presentations on different aspects of life and work in the compound and the Kingdom. Her story was fairly typical of most that I've heard so far: she and her husband went over there planning to stay for a couple of years and ended up staying for 20! She brought her own personal photo album--it was helpful to see relatively recent and unstaged shots of the housing and compound.
Along with the presentation, there was a series of medical procedures one after the other throughout the day. They took blood (three vials) and urine samples, a chest xray, and gave me a TB skin test.
Prior to my departure, I received a package from them with two plastic sample vials--I had to collect some of my own poop and, using the little sporks attached to the inside of the lids of the vials, transfer it into each of the sample vials. The vials contained different liquid fixatives and after carefully sporking poo into the little plastic tubes, I had to close them up and give them a good shake. Mmm. It was a very unpleasant process all around.
Samples carefully sampled and vials tightly closed and labeled--I thought the worst part was over. Oh, no, not at all. I still had to get through TSA at the airport security gates! You know the drill: liquids, properly stashed in a plastic ziplock, must be taken OUT OF YOUR BAG and placed in the plastic bins.
Yeah, I could only imagine that conversation: "Ma'am, what exactly is this?" "Um, that would be samples of my POO!"
Fortunately, that ended up only being a product of my own fertile imagination. No problems with TSA, poo safely delivered to the Aramco medical office in Houston.
Along with the presentation, there was a series of medical procedures one after the other throughout the day. They took blood (three vials) and urine samples, a chest xray, and gave me a TB skin test.
Prior to my departure, I received a package from them with two plastic sample vials--I had to collect some of my own poop and, using the little sporks attached to the inside of the lids of the vials, transfer it into each of the sample vials. The vials contained different liquid fixatives and after carefully sporking poo into the little plastic tubes, I had to close them up and give them a good shake. Mmm. It was a very unpleasant process all around.
Samples carefully sampled and vials tightly closed and labeled--I thought the worst part was over. Oh, no, not at all. I still had to get through TSA at the airport security gates! You know the drill: liquids, properly stashed in a plastic ziplock, must be taken OUT OF YOUR BAG and placed in the plastic bins.
Yeah, I could only imagine that conversation: "Ma'am, what exactly is this?" "Um, that would be samples of my POO!"
Fortunately, that ended up only being a product of my own fertile imagination. No problems with TSA, poo safely delivered to the Aramco medical office in Houston.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Change She Is A'Comin'
Big changes are in progress at Circus K9. I've been holding off on this particular post for some weeks now, but it is time to announce my news.
I have accepted a job with Saudi Aramco. In a few short weeks, I'll be moving to Dhahran, Saudia Arabia.
A friend emailed me today and asked me if I felt things were under control now or if everything was still pretty chaotic. The answer is that it's a mixed bag. After looking for work for more than four months, simply having a defined plan for the immediate future is a huge relief. But now the chaos and stress are being driven by different concerns related to uprooting my entire life, my pack, and making a move to a foreign country on the other side of the earth.
The Aramco job offers me three very significant things: it is a huge feather in my career cap, I will be able to participate in extremely challenging and interesting activities that build on all of my professional and technical areas of expertise, and it will ensure financial stability for my future.
Aramco has a reputation for technical excellence--there are very few Aramco expats circulating in the petroleum industry because once most people start working for Aramco, they stay there until they retire. Expat salaries are generous by design, Aramco salaries border on the obscene. My goal is to retire when I am 55 or so, in about 9 or 10 years. And even upon retirement, with the Aramco reputation behind me, I can selectively consult if I so choose.
But it's not only about the money. When I read the job description on the Aramco website back in June, I immediately thought, wow, they created this job just for me. And so it has proved--upon review of my resume the crew in KSA apparently thought the same thing. Interviews followed. Just yesterday I went to Houston for my orientation.
But what does all this mean for Circus K9? Although my tentative departure date is October 28, I have been preparing for this huge transition for many weeks. Everything is starting to compress now, speed up and get a bit more frenzied.
I look at every single object in my house and think, ship? Will I have room for it in my housing on the Dhahran compound? Store? Is it valuable enough that I might want it in 5 or 8 or 10 years? Sell? How much is it worth? How long would it take me to sell it? And finally, if it doesn't fall into any of those categories, do I donate it or throw it away?
It's not just about things either. There have been some really dramatic changes in the pack. Cap went back to his former Border Collie Rescue Foster mom in Austin. Bix flew to Salt Lake City last Friday to live with my friend Gosia (check out her blog with updates on how he's settling in with his harem of 4 female cats and her 3 BCs--hysterical). Gracie is now living with her new mom Connie in San Antonio. I'll post more about Gracie later. My mother has agreed to take my sweetpea Dyna, who should integrate seamlessly into her pack, and Bhumi, who I hope will snuggle up to her 15-year-old cat Freckles and give him some company in his twilight years.
I haven't yet found new homes for Jack and Lola but am working on that with the help of friends.
I plan to take Harry and Mimi to Dhahran with me.
Yes, my heart is breaking. I feel like I am cutting off my limbs with the departure of each one of my wonderful companions. I am running out of limbs, soon to be just a torso flopping on the ground. Can't pack too well if I'm just a torso.
But now that I've broken the news, I am going to be able to post a lot more about the crazy, wild adventure I am starting.
I have accepted a job with Saudi Aramco. In a few short weeks, I'll be moving to Dhahran, Saudia Arabia.
A friend emailed me today and asked me if I felt things were under control now or if everything was still pretty chaotic. The answer is that it's a mixed bag. After looking for work for more than four months, simply having a defined plan for the immediate future is a huge relief. But now the chaos and stress are being driven by different concerns related to uprooting my entire life, my pack, and making a move to a foreign country on the other side of the earth.
The Aramco job offers me three very significant things: it is a huge feather in my career cap, I will be able to participate in extremely challenging and interesting activities that build on all of my professional and technical areas of expertise, and it will ensure financial stability for my future.
Aramco has a reputation for technical excellence--there are very few Aramco expats circulating in the petroleum industry because once most people start working for Aramco, they stay there until they retire. Expat salaries are generous by design, Aramco salaries border on the obscene. My goal is to retire when I am 55 or so, in about 9 or 10 years. And even upon retirement, with the Aramco reputation behind me, I can selectively consult if I so choose.
But it's not only about the money. When I read the job description on the Aramco website back in June, I immediately thought, wow, they created this job just for me. And so it has proved--upon review of my resume the crew in KSA apparently thought the same thing. Interviews followed. Just yesterday I went to Houston for my orientation.
But what does all this mean for Circus K9? Although my tentative departure date is October 28, I have been preparing for this huge transition for many weeks. Everything is starting to compress now, speed up and get a bit more frenzied.
I look at every single object in my house and think, ship? Will I have room for it in my housing on the Dhahran compound? Store? Is it valuable enough that I might want it in 5 or 8 or 10 years? Sell? How much is it worth? How long would it take me to sell it? And finally, if it doesn't fall into any of those categories, do I donate it or throw it away?
It's not just about things either. There have been some really dramatic changes in the pack. Cap went back to his former Border Collie Rescue Foster mom in Austin. Bix flew to Salt Lake City last Friday to live with my friend Gosia (check out her blog with updates on how he's settling in with his harem of 4 female cats and her 3 BCs--hysterical). Gracie is now living with her new mom Connie in San Antonio. I'll post more about Gracie later. My mother has agreed to take my sweetpea Dyna, who should integrate seamlessly into her pack, and Bhumi, who I hope will snuggle up to her 15-year-old cat Freckles and give him some company in his twilight years.
I haven't yet found new homes for Jack and Lola but am working on that with the help of friends.
I plan to take Harry and Mimi to Dhahran with me.
Yes, my heart is breaking. I feel like I am cutting off my limbs with the departure of each one of my wonderful companions. I am running out of limbs, soon to be just a torso flopping on the ground. Can't pack too well if I'm just a torso.
But now that I've broken the news, I am going to be able to post a lot more about the crazy, wild adventure I am starting.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)