Narratio

I've been 'working overseas' as we poor Brits put it, on and off since 1976 when, as a young drafting office sprog, I went to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. I was only there for 3 weeks, but I'd got the bug. I was in Kuwait in '77/78 when we were building the Shuaiba LPG plant, Korea in '79/80 for the Yosu refinery and the UAE in ''81/82 when the Asab gas plant was being built. In those 3 short site assignments, working in obviously non-christian countries, I lost the 'spirit' of Xmas.
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It's been one of those bad months, both at work and personally.

My 76 year old mother discovered, 2 weeks back, that she has breast cancer. So they dragged her aged frame into hospital and did a mastectomy. When asked if she wanted the nipple left, she said no. Then commented that it had been a long while since she'd needed one, so why bother? My mother is now resting and recovering in hospital, which means something akin to what Attila or Alexander meant when they said they'd take ...

Oct 16th 2006 I left Tyumen, Siberia. The client, TNK-BP, had suffered a n internal meltdown. The western BP half wanted fiscal checks, engineering FEED documents, level 1 & 2 schedules and various HAZOP/HAZID reports. The Russian TNK half just wanted the keys to the piggy bank and kept assuring the western half to, basically 'don't worry, we're in control'.

I'd left Kazakhstan in Jan'06. Been home 3 days when I got a call that an old boss wanted me in Houston, Tx to do the Front ...

So, 17th Sept, 23.45 my flight leaves Bangkok heading for Istanbul. Fly for 10 hours, arrive at 5.00am'ish local time on the 18th. Hang around till midday when my next flight leaves for Atyrau, Kazakhstan. Arrive in Atyrau at 5.15pm after a 3 hour flight. I've been travelling 20 hours and am still only 2 hours time difference from my home in Bangkok.

It could be worse. I used to fly Bangkok (Thailand) to Frankfurt (then in West Germany) to Almaty (Kazakhstan) and then to Kyzl ...

Sitting at home watching Thai TV giving a quick repetition of 9/11 TV footage. I was at BKK airport when that happened, on my way to Moscow and Astrakhan. It was a bad day to fly.

The younger daughter has decided she no longer wants to learn horse riding, it's swimming or nothing. Last week it was the violin... And my elder daughter is considering getting pregnant. Considering she's only 22 I almost went apoplectic. Luckily her husband took my offered money and has bought himself ...