Middle East indeed has quite a lot of either and more – a unique culture. During the times that I’ve never traveled to that part of the world, I had a very different impression of the Arab world – mostly from travel channel shows of Morocco and Egypt. The problem with those shows is they are taken in Morocco & Egypt and they cover mostly tourist places which are not many and definitely not mainstream.
So visiting the Middle East was easily a culture shock to me and it took quite a bit to understand a lot of things there. Few other things still remain a mystery. On the above picture is Shengoop, me and Ali Mussalem in Oman that is trying to mobilize a Schlumberger unit for a job on a land rig involving secondary high explosives to perforate the oil well. Shengoop meaning “crap” is the nickname for Seif – I wouldn’t be surprised coz on our drive from Fahud to Sahmah, Shengoop was narrating his experience of getting lost in the sands and ending up over a border police check-post in Saudi Arabia with radio-active sources, which was originally sent to a rig in Oman – hehe!
Frequent break of journeys to sit around in a circle and enjoy the sunset with frequent shots of Omani coffee & fresh-picked home dates is commonplace in this country. Business and people in Oman is pretty laid back – fair enough for an oil rich country with population less than most metropolitan cities in the world. Observe the Oman Chips carton (I kind of have a thing for this chips, very different in taste & flavor), 1.4 D Explosives placard (the 1.4 D is a universal explosives classification code – in this case referring to a Secondary High Explosives, which are the most deadly of all) and the nothingness of the background! The desert in Oman is not like the usual ones with sand dunes you would imagine (though Oman does have some places with dunes) – they are mostly granular sands and rock formations.
That is Shengoop at a closer angle – it was fun working with him during that job; he just lost the key for the pick-up truck during that job – but hey, at least we didn’t end up in Saudi Arabia :-)
Back in the Petrogas camp in Sahmah, we got to stand-by for a day before they wanted Schlumberger crew in the rig. I stole (really) a bike from the camp and was so excited to ride it on the camp corridors.
And ended up like this…!
So visiting the Middle East was easily a culture shock to me and it took quite a bit to understand a lot of things there. Few other things still remain a mystery. On the above picture is Shengoop, me and Ali Mussalem in Oman that is trying to mobilize a Schlumberger unit for a job on a land rig involving secondary high explosives to perforate the oil well. Shengoop meaning “crap” is the nickname for Seif – I wouldn’t be surprised coz on our drive from Fahud to Sahmah, Shengoop was narrating his experience of getting lost in the sands and ending up over a border police check-post in Saudi Arabia with radio-active sources, which was originally sent to a rig in Oman – hehe! 
Frequent break of journeys to sit around in a circle and enjoy the sunset with frequent shots of Omani coffee & fresh-picked home dates is commonplace in this country. Business and people in Oman is pretty laid back – fair enough for an oil rich country with population less than most metropolitan cities in the world. Observe the Oman Chips carton (I kind of have a thing for this chips, very different in taste & flavor), 1.4 D Explosives placard (the 1.4 D is a universal explosives classification code – in this case referring to a Secondary High Explosives, which are the most deadly of all) and the nothingness of the background! The desert in Oman is not like the usual ones with sand dunes you would imagine (though Oman does have some places with dunes) – they are mostly granular sands and rock formations.
That is Shengoop at a closer angle – it was fun working with him during that job; he just lost the key for the pick-up truck during that job – but hey, at least we didn’t end up in Saudi Arabia :-)
Back in the Petrogas camp in Sahmah, we got to stand-by for a day before they wanted Schlumberger crew in the rig. I stole (really) a bike from the camp and was so excited to ride it on the camp corridors.
And ended up like this…!
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