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Published: September 13th 2013
Weekly Managers Meeting
We've started making our meetings field based to see progressThe time has come. I am in the process of canceling my Dubai visa and officially moving to Qatar. How do I feel about this? Well, you all know that I absolutely love love love Dubai. But I will be happy to finally have a place to call home. Again. I think that maybe once I can officially settle down in Doha, I will feel more at home and happy. I don't know why, but I still basically have the mentality of living out of a suitcase. I try not to buy too much. And I haven't even hung my pictures! Though I do plan to move somewhere nicer in a few months, so maybe I'll still hold off...
Anyway, the process is a difficult one. When I moved to Dubai I had a stellar HR team who did all the dirty work for me. No such luck at our office here. Here, the guy who is supposed to be in charge of everything handed my degree back - it had previously been attested for my Dubai visa. So, he didn't know what to do with it. Well I sure as heck don't know what to do with it! Surely,
there must be some way to get it attested in Qatar so I don't have to go through the long process again, right? Well weeks later, of my own searching in my copious amounts of spare time, it seems like that's a no. So I ask him again and he said: oh I had to send it back to the Qatar embassy in the US, that's the only way - why the heck didn't he do this in the first place???? I'd have my visa by now!!!! So frustrating. I don't have time to deal with this crap. I really wanted to go off on him, but unfortunately you have to be nice to certain people so you can get things in the future and he is one of them... So I sent it back last week and I hope it doesn't take to long. In the meantime, I need to cancel my Dubai visa, and prepare to hunker down in Doha until my visa is approved. I can't leave the country until it is. Which means I most likely will be unable to travel YET AGAIN during the Eid holiday. I'm super bummed. I wanted to go to Prague
Radisson Blu
Love nice bathrooms... so bad... Keep your fingers crossed that the process will be quick and smooth...
I had to make a quick visa run to Dubai because my 30 days on the tourist visa were up. I'd planned to go during the weekend, but work work work. Instead I went Sunday night through Monday. Quick trip and I had left my steel toed shoes on- oops! I stayed at the Radisson Blu hotel near the Dubai Mall, which was pretty good. I took a nice long hot bath with a glass of wine and fell sound asleep in a comfortable bed. The next day, me and my steel toed shoes went to Dubai, got a new pair of shoes, looked for a few specific books, and saw a VIP movie before heading back to Doha. It was a nice short break. The flight was exciting as we were stuck in a sandstorm. "Ladies and Gentlemen: The pilot has informed me that he has stopped the engines and we will wait on the taxiway until the sandstorm passes." Sandstorm? Really? I opened my window and sure enough there were strong winds pushing sand and trash alongside the plane. Exciting, but a little
scary to fly after that! Flying over, you could see the big dark clouds of sand pushing toward the city.
Last Friday we did another brunch, this time at the Moevenpick, a little closer to home (Mark's hotel room). Of course we had a lot of the usual flaky people who just decide not to show. I don't get people that can't be bothered to leave a message that they can't come somewhere... Whatever. We still had a good time. Me, Mark, Marcus, Jeroen, and Zoran. The brunch was pretty good, then we went to Mark's room to rock out to some music until the bar opened (bars don't open here til 5 and brunch is over at 3:30). At around 5, we made our way down to the hotel bar to finish up the evening. I seriously I haven't drank as much as I have the last few weeks in ages! I really don't miss drinking too much. But it was a fun evening.
The bars here are very funny. Again, none of them are ever open anywhere until at least 5pm. Generally, in most bars you have to scan your passport or give a national id.
One bar at a hotel that shall remain nameless, had a sign that said "Qatari women not allowed". Can you imagine? This is your country and you are denied entry while your menfolk can get hammered and hit on women of the night? I often find myself as the only woman in some of these bars and I wonder if the staff think that I'm being paid... If you stick to more of the expat bars in the big fancy hotels, it's ok, but many of the city center hotels have these seedy bars where you feel a bit exposed as a woman. Fortunately, I am almost always with a few different guys and don't notice too much. And on Friday, I was feeling pretty good at that point and so didn't even care. We had a killer bar bill - yikes! But it was totally fun. I felt ok the next day too - phew!
Aside from bad influences on the weekend, I am still pretty happy here. I can't say enough how much I love my job. I love it!!! Even stressful days. So Mark was called back to Oz permanently and he had a handover to
End of the night
almost... i think we had a few more... me for his two big projects. These two projects started at the exact same time, are high profile, and have very demanding clients. We have a new commercial project manager starting this coming week who will take over one, but I have the other for the time being. One is the first football stadium for the 2022 World Cup. The other is a portion of the metro line. We were pressured into starting RIGHT NOW for the drilling even though the clients obviously are missing crucial details which are daily nuisances. Seriously, I wish people here would learn to take just one extra week to tie up the loose ends - then the project should move forward relatively smoothly. Nope. Here the mentality is NOW NOW NOW!!!
At least we are doing a very good job on all of our projects. We have hired a drilling manager for three months to train our drill crews, especially since we promoted some assistants to drillers and we have brand new machines coming in. The core quality has improved dramatically and the production is starting to improve as well. For the metro, they drilled 3 boreholes in 3 days - compared to
some previous history, that is fantastic! Hopefully, we can keep it up. Also, I am very proud of all my geologists. I feel like I can take pride and say that I am partially responsible for their development. They are all extremely smart and enthusiastic, and each has risen to the challenge I've set for them. I have four geologists now, and will have 7 by the end of the month, and 14 by the end of the year. My four current guys have learned a lot during the months we were relatively slow and have moved beyond just core logging and in-situ testing into a management/supervisory role in the field as well. We have four big projects and my goal is for each of them to be the lead geologist on one of them. Two have already shown their skills; the youngest was unexpectedly called onto the metro because of the start date and his availability - I was a little concerned because he is just one year out of college and this is going to be a huge project, but he has done a great job, by all accounts. Yay me and yay them!
Well,
Mark's last party
Zoran with Mark, who didn't last much longer. since this has turned into a blog about work, I'll let you go. I'm in Dubai this weekend, hanging with Jamie, so I'm sure the next blog will be a bit more interesting....
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The Travel Camel
Shane Dallas
A Monday shamal
I was caught in that sandstorm too - but had just existed the metro to see the clouds of sand swirling towards me, so made a hasty move to the nearest shopping mall. Despite my pace, I was still covered with a light layer of sand. I can see why you love Dubai, and it is my intention to resettle here in the coming months. Would be great to meet in Dubai during one of your visa runs!