Eng-1 School Intro

I arrived in Abu Dhabi for my Engineering-1 school 2 weeks ago today. Now for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll back up a little. As part of my training I am sent off to school for 9 weeks of intensive learning. I spend 9 hours a day, 5 days a week in the classroom, on the rig, or in the shop learning how to do my job. Then go home and do homework and study for the rest of the day. Now you might ask, what were the past 5 years of university for then? Basically they were to get me to the point that I can understand, absorb, and then regurgitate all this information I’m getting in a very short time.

After Mines it might not sound very hard. And really it’s not. Except that the stakes are infinitely higher. At school, studying for a test was very abstract. ‘What happens if I fail this test?’ – my class grade goes down, maybe I have to retake the course, maybe I stay an extra year at school, maybe I lose a scholarship, maybe I get yelled at by my parents, maybe I make my teacher angry etc… Here, studying for a test is very concrete.  If I fail this test, I get a warning letter from the company, my boss finds out and if I fail two tests I get two warning letters and lose my job. Not to mention, if you don’t understand what you’re doing at my work, you can lose the company hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars with one small mistake. The incentive to study is infinitely greater.

A Touchy Cough...

After my pre-school exam I was sent out to the rig for a little more than a week. I arrived just as I was starting to get a cold and rigging up in the rain then lack of sleep from switching to night shift schedule meant that I very quickly got really sick. After 5 or 6 days my crew got sick of hearing me cough and I was having trouble keeping enough energy to get through my 12 hour shifts. My coworker finally called a car to take me to see the doctor. Unfortunately it was a Saturday, so going to the doctor meant going to the emergency room. 

Now one reason I chose Villahermosa over my other Russia offer is that Villahermosa is said to have some of the best hospitals outside of Mexico City. I can now confirm that they do seem very nice. I walked in with my coveralls still on and announced that I didn’t speak much Spanish but I was sick and wanted to see a doctor.

My rig Spanish is definitely getting up to a sufficient level and I can communicate everything I need there. However, medicine was a new region of Spanish I hadn’t explored before. I saw the doctor and explained that it was hard to breathe and “No puedo dormir porque yo toque todo vez”.  Now what I thought I said was “I can’t sleep because I cough all the time”.  What I actually said was “I can’t sleep because I touch all the time”.  I’m not really sure what they thought I was trying to say.  Anyway, cough is tos and toque is touch.  Apparently easy to confuse.