Croatia, Sicily, Venice, Egypt, Canada

These are the places I have been sent to since my last post on this thing.

Greetings all, I realise it has been a while and honestly I have no excuse as to why I haven't written anything here. I will try and give an update on the places I have been recently.

Last time I had just arrived home from my first assignment in Mexico and my enforced prolonged stay in Amsterdam airport. Christmas and New Year came and went as they tend to do and I found myself sitting in the Guildford office for nearly a month before my next assignment was sent to me. Destination: Croatia.

I had never been to Croatia before so I was looking forward to this assignment. I quickly booked my flights and packed my bags and 2 days later landed in Zagreb and was greeted at the airport by my chief. As it turned out the job in Croatia was in a kind of limbo and as a result there wasn't much to do apart from learning the layout of the unit and teaching myself the technology. I made sure I stayed out in the field as much as I could and enjoyed tracing out lines and learning the layout. I also made my first climb up a distillation column. 60 metres high and quite a workout. Great view from the top as well. The spare time I had was spent in Zagreb, wandering around and trying out the local food, which was excellent. A restaurant in Sisak (the town where the refinery is located) serves what is now my favourite steak. Trick will be finding it should I ever go back.

After about 10 days in Croatia, the crew was temporarily released as the Croatian government had to give approval before the unit could be started which could take several weeks. I was quite disappointed at this as I didn't get a chance to see much and as a result a very useful learning opportunity was lost. Never mind, I was in the UK for all of about 20 hours before flying off to my next assignment. Destination: Gela, Sicily

Sicily is quite a place to get sent on assignment. Typically refineries aren't in nice locations. Although the town of Gela is not that nice, most of the rest of Sicily is. I was lucky enough to spend a month here and saw plenty of sites. Places I visited included Siracusa, Donnafugata, Caltagirone and Arigento.

Siracusa is famous as the hometown of Archimedes and the entire town is a UNESCO world heritage site. It's a beautiful place dominated by small winding roads. Caltagirone is a town located not far from Gela and is famous for it's ceramics and Arigento is the location of the Valley of the Temples. This is a site of around 9 ancient greek temples some of which are in amazing condition. Well worth a visit.

After Sicily I returned to the UK for a while. My next destination was not because of UOP but the opportunity to reunite with Chicago friends in Dublin. It was great seeing Rachel, Kathy and Chithra again and much fun was had in Dublin doing the usual tourist spots such as the Guinness Storehouse, Jameson's Brewery, Phoenix Park and a very interesting walking town of the town.

My next assignment occurred not long after Dublin and I couldn't believe my luck. Destination: Venice.

As I mentioned earlier, refineries are not typically in nice locations. There are however some exceptions. I made a lot of people jealous when I told them where I was. Venice is a beautiful place and the best thing to do when you go there is just to wander around. Do not go there with a plan, it is a nightmare to navigate and if you know where you want to go you almost certainly will get lost. Also check out Murano for its glass making and Burano for its brightly painted houses.

Venice was also a fun place to work. Me and the rest of the UOP crew got on really well with the refinery staff. One of the staff kept on asking my chief about what he called "American Myths" such as the quarterback always dating the head cheerleader etc. Great fun had by all.

After coming back from Venice I waited around for a few more weeks and then was sent on my first billable job in Alexandria in Egypt. I can't really write much about Alex as I was only there for a few days and was on night shift so I didn't get a chance to see much. My impressions of Egypt was that its people are very friendly and their driving is crazy. An amusing highlight was our final dinner.

We asked the hotel to suggest a restaurant for us to eat. They wrote down the name of the place, however as it was in Arabic this didn't really help us. The hotel then got us a taxi to take us there and when we arrived we went into the restaurant and asked the waiter to just bring us meat. That was our order, Meat. The food was excellent, in fact I didn't have a bad meal while I was there.

After departing Egypt I was then sent on my first Chief job in Canada. The location of the refinery was the amusingly titled town of Come-by-Chance in Newfoundland. Newfoundland is an extremely rural part of the world and very beautiful. You also have to watch out for moose when you drive which was something I had never had to worry about before. I did see some moose around on the roads and one did run out in front of me, though thankfully I had plenty of time to stop. There wasn't much to do in the area apart from drive around and admire the scenery which in fairness was beautiful.

That is a condensed update. Currently I'm scheduled to go to Angola in a couple of weeks time. I was also scheduled to go to India but appear to have been taken off that one due to delays, however as I have the visa there's not much stopping UOP from reassigning me to that job.