Mid to Late January 2005 - Rig 33 in Yibal, North Oman, then back to base in Fahud
My attendance at the last Omani dinner party was quite a success. The boys were so keen to impress me with their culinary skills and local cuisine that they sent one of the operators on a secret mission (007 style) to Nizwa - 100km away - to collect the makings for a mountainous stack of mishakik. And they weren't going to take "no" for an answer - although they're slowly working out that "food" and "no" are two words that I never put in the same sentence!
Mishakik is the dish the Omanis cook on just about any special occasion, and it's basically marinated lamb and/or goat meat (usually including the liver) which is threaded onto sticks and cooked over charcoal. We had our Mishakik with coconut rice and the tastiest tomato salad in the universe! For me the mishakik was ok, but the tomato salad with coconut rice was to die for!
The boys here think that I'd be a clever girl to jump on the band wagon and go Muslim; but if they keep feeding me like this I'll have little hope of becoming anything except Buddha!
By mid January it was time to scoot up north to a Rig at Yibal. Need I say that it took me little time to make friends with the kitchen staff. At this rig they have bbq meat once every week. Here's me cooking bbq chicken with Michael, the Bangladeshi cook from the junior mess. Michael's been working 7 days per week on the rigs in Oman for about 6 or 7 years, although he gets time off every year or two to go home and see his wife. He's planning to give up working in Oman in about a year's time so that he can go home to his family for good. He's invited Bradley and I to Bangladesh and visit him and his wife one day.
And yes, I was sneaky enough to make my way into the senior mess too (until I was kicked out by the rig manager). Here's me with another cook from Bangladesh, and then with one from India. Sorry for the fuzzy first photo; the Indian cook is not what I'd call a skilled photographer. They asked me if they could have a photo with me. It seems that they don't get many engineers (or girls for that matter) sneaking around in their kitchen.
All went well on the rig; the pipes and bits went into the ground without any disasters. The work I do at the rig site is almost always the last thing that happens before the rig is packed up and moved to a new location. When we finished our work this time I got some photos of the hoist being lowered on the rig to make it ready for transport.
If you look carefully in the photos above, you'll see a green thing at the base of the rig. This is the "christmas tree," which is the only thing that will be left on site when the rig leaves. Here's James (in the blue coveralls) in front of the christmas tree. Have a look at the size of James compared to the christmas tree, and then go back to the first rig picture (where the hoist is vertical) and have a look at the size of the rig compared to the green christmas tree. The rigs really are big beasts!
This is me separating some fittings in the rig's vice. I should have skipped uni and become a mechanic!
One thing that always strikes me about working in Oman is that there seems to be no limit to the number of helpers you can use for any given task. At home they say that, "too many cooks will spoil the broth," but this doesn't seem to hold true in Oman. Here it's, "the more the merrier!"
These next photos were taken back in the workshop. The forklift radiator had sprung a leak, and therefore needed to come out and get sent into Muscat for repairs. In Australia removing a radiator is a job for one person, but in Oman you can easily keep 10 people busy with a job like this! The guy in blue on the left in the first photo is Gordon - he's my kite-flying Scottish supervisor here in Fahud.
And here is the camera shy Saif - he's my workshop boyfriend.
On the left in the next photo is Ram. He's from Kerla in India and he's the secretary at our workshop. If it's smiles you're looking for - Ram's your man!
It turns out that Muslims aren't impressed with the whole one Eid (Christmas) per year business. So sticking with the general theme of the Middle East, why have one when you can have TWO! All I can say to that is, hal-eh-lou-ya, amen and in-shallah ["god willing", or something to that effect in Arabic]! Eid number two was on the 20th January, and to mark the momentous event the locals at our camp slaughtered four sheep for lunch/dinner. In Australia when you slaughter meat, you hang it afterwards in a cool place for a few days to cure. Well I can report with confidence that that's not the done thing here. The idea here is, "the fresher the better". I found myself dicing lamb for the bbq that was still warm - like body temperature! Things sure are different here. It was really bizarre cutting up warm raw meat - I'm so used to it coming out of a fridge.
I also sharpened some of the Omanis' knives. Some of them were so blunt that you could turn them upside down and you wouldn't notice the difference. They were pretty happy with the sharpening though. Mind you, they're not used to knives that cut so easily and there were a few bleeding fingers by the afternoon!
Never the less it appears that no great harm has been done. I also hear that the Omanis are thinking of promoting me to assistant chef at their back-of-camp outdoor dinner parties. I think that makes me the first foreigner to achieve the rank! I'm honored!
Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the actual bbq feast. Sorry about that. I did however take this self-portrait of myself on 30th January. I knew you'd all want to see it!
