Heading home again

Almost time for me to head back to the uk for a two week break. This week I have been supporting testing in the main GTL control room, an eighth of which is shown in the picture. We have been testing the Master Flow Controller of the off-shore wells. Basically the same piece of equipment that caused BP to spill a couple of cans of oil into the sea. Actually, precautions were in place to ensure that this Sub-Sea Safety Valve remained closed, so we didn't spill a drop! Also, I have just been upgraded into a new room, with fridge, microwave, DVD player, a luxury chair, a larger bed and a metre square coffee table. Oh and cable internet access instead of wireless, much faster. Anyway, Wednesday is my last day until October 2nd, so I am looking forward to a nice lazy break.

Hard at work in the office.

This is supposed to be a Honeywell Hot desk, but the same people usually occupy a given desk. Myself, and Paul Day, to my left, are in our usual seats, with Gerard Brennan opposite Paul, and Haytham Amin to my right, who usually sits opposite me. My roll as Technical Expert is slowly evolving, I am now getting the odd problem to solve, here and there. When things are slow, I look at different technologies. For example, this week, I looked into OPC. Haytham is an OPC expert, so he has been helping me. He gave me a suite of OPC servers, clients, and OPC modbus server, so I installed these on my laptops and was able to use a modbus simulator on one laptop and an OPC server and client on the other laptop, network them and read the modbus data on the client, via the OPC server. Quite interesting, and useful, as we have a lot of OPC links here on site. Today, Friday, my day off, I have been in the gym, and at the pool, as usual. Three hours at the pool, two and a quater hours sun bathing. Thank goodness I have good sun tan lotion, otherwise I would have been burned to a crisp! Well I am about to start the final week of my second visit, wednesday night I fly back to the uk for a two week break. Returning for my third visit on the 2nd October.

End of forth week, second visit

Four weeks gone of my second trip to Qatar, and two weeks to go before I fly back (16th sept) for two weeks of puting my feet up, watching a few movies and maybe a little DIY. It's been a hot and sticky week, with very high humidity. Except today (my day off) which was just very hot by the pool. I am starting to take on a bit more work now, mainly in the Honeywell office. Hopefully, on my third trip, I will find my niche, and get into something more interesting, working on the Experion system. The picture shows the long road I walk down two or three times a day to get to the engineering room. It is a pleasent walk, when it's not too humid, otherwise you are pretty wet by the time you arrive there. Next week I may be supporting some Well-head testing, for 5 or 6 days. This will probably involve driving the system, while the client tests their logic. Could be interesting, getting to see how the off-shore platforms function. Time to chill out and watch a little tv now.