Hamad’s Abqaiq Road Adventures

Well, this was a nice fucking weekend, wasn’t it? I had to stay at the rig in Abqaiq from Thursday morning (5 am) til Sunday afternoon. I had to drive almost daily for 90 minutes back home to get my food for the day and workout, then drive back for 90 minutes (at night) to get back to the rig. Ofcourse, if boss man knew that I left the rig, he’d chew my ass up. But when you have a new foreman, and you’re a new engineer (read: whore) and no one knows what the fuck to do out there, you kinda say “fuck it”. How do they justify keeping me there for 4 fucking days? “You are a professional. This is your job and you are responsible for it. Besides, we’re paying you overtime.” Overtime (pronounced: over-team) meaning I only get paid 4 hours extra on weekdays, and 12 hours max on weekends… add to that my shitty basic salary… what do you get? Enough money to buy my wife a can of red bull. Add to that the fact that I’m not learning anything during my “stay” here with drilling… why? because my senior engineer is a total ASS!!! This is his idea of “teaching” me how to do my job:
Me: “how can I identify the top of this kind of formation?”
Him: “you take the geologram and ….” He starts pointing and looking at it then he says “it’s at 4860 feet”
Me: “how did you get that number?”
Him: “look… here… it’s at 4860 feet.”
Me: “I know… but how did you conclude that it’s at 4860 feet? If I were to do it alone, how would I know it’s at 4860 feet.”
Him: “well… you have to look at it here… I remember this one time when I drove to khobar and…” then the fucker tells me a story that has no relevance to what we were talking about. After 20 minutes of his babbling, I ask him again “how did you figure out the top of this formation is at 4860 feet”… he then repeats the whole thing again and tells me another story. I’ve been at this for 4 months right now… and I swear everytime this happens, I get closer and closer to beating him up…
Anyway, everytime I drive at night to abqaiq I see this little mouse cross the street… freaks me out everytime… cuz the road is fucking pitch black… you can’t see shit… and then there’s this mouse that runs across the street. I was listening to the radio while driving at night after I went into the skid road (no, it’s not made out of shit. It’s a 20 minute off road drive to the rig… all I can say is it’s dark, it’s bumpy, and you see shit that isn’t there). The radio had the “hardcore techno” hour on… man, let me tell, with all those fucking weird ass noises in techno music, I was fucking trippin’. I was waiting for that half man half horse dude to jump out in front of my car. Although I don’t believe in “spooky spooky haunty haunty” shit, you still have that “what if” in the back of your mind.
At the rig, we have rooms to sleep in that are specifically designed to make you feel uncomfortable. After you turn off the light in that room, you can’t see shit. The only thing you can hear is the sound of steel grinding against steel every 20-30 seconds (rig noises while drilling… loud as shit)… I fell asleep at around 11 pm… an old man tapped my shoulder and woke me up… he was short… very long white beard… bald… he said “you can see dead people”… I was like “what?” then he said “you can see me, can’t you?”… then I woke up (for real)… no one was there… just pitch black darkness and the sound of the drill pipes grinding… went back to bed… heard someone running in my room and laughing that woke me up…I got up quickly… then I woke up (for real)…. This kept happening again and again til 5 am… after that I had to go to the foreman’s room and see what the fuck was going on with drilling…
Sunday at around 10 am, my supervisor called me… told me he wanted me in the office as soon as possible to finish a drilling program… because, as usual, they gave almost all the engineers vacations except yours truly. Why? I went to my supervisor in May, told him I wanted my vacation in mid july… he said that management insisted that no one takes his vacation during the months of june or july and he can’t do anything about it. A month later (in june) I overheard some engineers saying “yeah, I’m leaving in a week” and others saying “yeah, last day is july 9th”… I was like “WHAT THE FUCK???” went to the supervisor and he said “oh… yeah, well, the slots are all filled and we can’t do anything right now.”…
After that, I’ve decided to do the same thing I did in Juaima last year. I’ll get my final evaluation with drilling by December… after that, I’ll have til march to piss on them. In juaima, I was given my evaluation, and they told me to do an annual survey that takes roughly 2 weeks to do… I spent 3 months sitting on my ass and getting paid… supervisor kept begging me to do it cuz management wanted it. I used to have my IE window open surfing the forums and telling him “yyyyyup… working on it.”
I only care about my evaluations now because… well, my pay sucks… and if you know the company I work for… the minimum base pay for a grade 11 engineer is 11,000 riyals. Ofcourse, they say “whoaw whoaw whoaw… you’re a PDP (although my job title is “engineer”)… you’re still under training… you’ll spend three years as a trainee… your basic salary will be 8,000 riyals… you will try to build it up to the minimum pay with your evaluations within the next three years (a lot of people don’t make it to the MINIMUM basic salary within those three years due to fucked up bosses who give them shitty evaluations for no reasons)… then, you will be treated as an engineer (read: whore)”
Most people tell me “well if you don’t like it… you should quit… you just complain and complain and complain…”… let me tell you the beauty of this company… after my 3 year assignment is done… I’ll have a dead end job… sitting on my ass all day and getting paid… I’m assuming (from all the people I know) that evaluations automatically turn to crap when you’re in the PMP system. I will build up my base pay now… when I’m done… I sit on my ass and get paid to show up on time… it’s just a matter of time…
Besides, you can’t get fired even if you tried.


A word of fucking advice

If your fat ass doesn’t know how to diet or exercise properly, don’t go buying up all the damn fat burners in the market, because there are people who actually need them. God!! It pissed me the fuck off.. I went to the supp store in bahrain a couple of weeks ago and I was looking for some yohimbine hcl and synephrine and crap… I can’t order shit online because… well… you know the story… anyway, I talked to the guy in the store and asked him about what the hell happened to all the fat burners (I hate calling them fat burners… I really do… I prefer the word “mobilizer” over burner)… he said they were out… then I remembered… it’s fucking summer… when every obese bastard wants to lose 7 billion metric tons of fat and show off that six pack within 10 hours… not knowing that most probably he’ll be stuck with that super sized family pack for the rest of his life. Seriously, I mean, I’m fucking stuck with burning fat from my quads, hams, chest, and upper back, but the rest isn’t even budging… the shit won’t mobilize (I like that word)… see, I need these “fat burners” to help burn fat proportionally off my body… fat people need fat burners to make excuses for dieting, swallow 5 times the recommended dose, die of a heart attack 2 days later, and then the FDA bans that supplement because it’s “dangerous”… it’s not enough that fat fucks caused the ban on ephedrine, let alone finishing all of the fucking fat burners in the market… fucking fat asses think a diet is having a “low carb” burger at hardee’s (carls jr.)…

Tip of the fucking millennium

Abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym. Tattoo that on your forehead. I have made it a point not to train abs for the past 4 months (I probably trained them 2 or 3 times during that time period, out of boredom). I will not train abs this season… never will I touch them. Why? To prove to everyone that you don’t need to train fucking abs to get a six pack.

Update on progress….

… still a fat ass. I’ll get back to you when I can see my toes.