Today it's the 31st of October, and I'm returning to Hamburg for the weekend, after two busy and very challenging weeks. But we got the job done in the end, and our computer systems for real-time drilling operations are now up and running. So my stay in Egypt was all in all a success!
My time in Cairo was mostly spent working, but I did have some time to look around in Maadi (the part of Cairo I stayed in), and made a few interesting observations. The first thing that struck me on the way from the airport to the hotel was the traffic. I knew Cairo traffic had reputation of being particularly bad, but now I could see for myself how it was. And it was really bad... Almost all drivers seemed to be only thinking about themselves, and not minding the other cars around them. People were changing lanes at random without any signal, some cars suddenly stopped and went in reverse, some cars drove in the wrong direction, and the most obvious thing - everybody was honking like crazy all the time! I later heard from a Germany woman living in Cairo that some of the honking is done in a code language to communicate in a way.
In the evenings I usually went out to eat with the three Germans from RWE Dea AG. Most of the time we went to TGI Friday's by the river Nile, or Restaurant 55 on Road 9. One thing that made the Egyptian restaurants different than European restaurants was that almost all restaurants were serving "Shisha" - water pipe! This is a big cultural thing in Egypt, and almost everybody smokes it. You get all sorts of flavours - mint, apple, peach, anis, cherry, cappuchino - you name it! My German collegues loved the stuff and smoked it almost every night! I should emphazise that none of them smoked water pipes with hashis or marijuana or anything, only "harmless" tobacco with added flavour.
After setting up our computer systems in the office in Cairo we all headed for the "North-West Khilala" rig site for 4 days to set up the system there. We didn't really know much about what the rig site would be like. We knew it was in the Nile delta, and not in the desert, but we had no clue what the living conditions were going to be like or anything. But whatever expectations I may have had it turned out to be quite different than anything I had imagined! First of all, the drive from Cairo to the rig was a total adventure! The closer we got to the rig, the worse the roads got, and the scenery more and more interesting. We drove by small villages where farmers rode on mules or plowed the fields by hand, or with the help of some bulls. The women were washing clothes in the river, often dressed in a full burka. Kids and animals alike were all bathing in the Nile. It was facinating to see all of this! It was raining most of the day, so the roads got worse and worse. The last distance we drove to get to the rig didn't look much like a road at all!
I had to work almost non-stop at the rig site to get the work done, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, cause there isn't really much to do there. Only watch some TV, or perhaps read a book if you remembered to bring one. My 3 German collegues had brought a "Shisha" from Cairo, so they spent most of the evenings getting it to work, and then smoking it. One problem at the rig site was the cell phone coverage, it was very limited. But we found out that a small area in one corner of the rig site was a little bit better than other places, so we managed to stay in touch with civilization there.
One interesting thing I learned in Cairo was that foreign companies are required to hire 3 Egyptians for every foreign guy they hire. Naturally, for an oil company it may be hard to find 3 qualified petro-physicists or geo-physicists for each foreigner they hire, so instead they hire some Egyptians to walk around serving coffee or drinks to the staff. And also some to work as company drivers (which is very useful to have, since only the local Egyptians know the unwritten rules of Cairo traffic).
My birthday came up during my stay in Cairo, and the 3 Germans had somehow found out about this, so they arranged tickets for a laser show at the Pyramids, and then later a dinner at a superb restaurant at a hotel right next to the Pyramids. It was a big surprise, and a very memorable birthday!
Now I'm trying to have a relaxing weekend in Cairo before heading for Libya on Monday. That will be very intersting, and possible the most challenging job I've done so far...
