Hello There!
So today was the day....my first day in the office as a civil engineer and what a day, I am genuinely exhausted! I mean what was I thinking 07:30 to 17:00 as a standard working day....think i'm a little to used to student working / sleeping hours for this! Probably why its now 23:30 and I am up doing this instead of getting the sleep I need to be up at 6:00 tomorrow! But what the hell wouldn't be work if it was easy right!?
Having made it to the office, I had to pass through usual company induction processes and got a shock when I met some people! Not what I had expected from the phone calls! However I received a very warm welcome around the office and met some very polite helpful people too! To say I was nervous however would be an understatement! The drive in felt like a lifetime had past and was easily the slowest journey of my life....and no not just because of being caught in traffic on the C Ring Road!
And yeah whilst on the topic of traffic....I AM NEVER DRIVING HERE!!! Well not for a good while any way! They are bloody nutters, you want a fun game of chicken, try crossing the C Ring Road, never been so terrified ..and I have been to Thailand!!! The green cross code means nothing here; crazy U-turn junctions, the mounting of pavements to get around a slower cars, and the orchestra of car horns is insane!
On the plus side, dare I say it...touch wood....my boss turns out to be a really lovely person. Couldn't have made me feel more welcome, even offering to grab a coffee and show me the local salad bar at lunch! Being English as well was a massive relief for me...let alone to find they were from my hometown of Plymouth! This just added to the warming of the office and enabled to quickly feel like a had a place here.
As for being broken in easily though I can see that is not the way! My first assignment was to read a report to get an idea of what standard is acceptable and what is expected! Ok I thought, 10 mins I thought........268 pages and about 2 hours later I had finally done it! To see the scale of what was being done by the office was simply mind blowing and to think that one day I will be able to turn around and say.."Yeah, I was part of that" will be incredible!
Tomorrow I believe I will be correcting the English of some reports, this will be be interesting. I mean how does the old saying go? "I am enginer, I am enjineer, I am enginner, I DO MATH!" lol. All the same I am eager to see what tomorrow brings!
After such a long day at the office I was taken to my company apartment....mine for the next month and it is AMAZING! Well its missing a few home comforts but hell there was a 52inch plasma TV, a gym and 2 swimming pools and best of all Guinness in the fridge! Perfect.
After a short while I decided that it was time to get something to eat! So off I went to quickly nip out and get a weeks worth of shopping! What a joke that was; one could call it a journey in its own right! After dancing with a few cars on the crossings, and trekking for 30mins to the lulu center by Hamad Medical City, in the 23°C heat, I was bitterly disappointed to find that I couldn't even pick up a loaf of bread there! So having backed up on my self I walked another 30 mins to find a small family food store where again the shear little choice of food was disgraceful. I couldn't even make a meal out of what you could buy...just bits of odds and sods, i.e. Tomato Ketchup and Bottled Water perhaps with a seasoning of tinned kidney beans...lovely!
So long story short my 2 hour outing successfully amounted to me returning with a bottle of shower gel, carton of UHT milk, cotton buds and batteries and chicken hotdogs.....delicious. Funny thing is after this ordeal turns out there are two big hypermarkets about 5 mins from the apartment in the opposite direction I walked! Morale of the story...use a freaking map!
Anyway better hit the sack ready for another day,
Goodbye!
Sean
So today was the day....my first day in the office as a civil engineer and what a day, I am genuinely exhausted! I mean what was I thinking 07:30 to 17:00 as a standard working day....think i'm a little to used to student working / sleeping hours for this! Probably why its now 23:30 and I am up doing this instead of getting the sleep I need to be up at 6:00 tomorrow! But what the hell wouldn't be work if it was easy right!?
Having made it to the office, I had to pass through usual company induction processes and got a shock when I met some people! Not what I had expected from the phone calls! However I received a very warm welcome around the office and met some very polite helpful people too! To say I was nervous however would be an understatement! The drive in felt like a lifetime had past and was easily the slowest journey of my life....and no not just because of being caught in traffic on the C Ring Road!
And yeah whilst on the topic of traffic....I AM NEVER DRIVING HERE!!! Well not for a good while any way! They are bloody nutters, you want a fun game of chicken, try crossing the C Ring Road, never been so terrified ..and I have been to Thailand!!! The green cross code means nothing here; crazy U-turn junctions, the mounting of pavements to get around a slower cars, and the orchestra of car horns is insane!
On the plus side, dare I say it...touch wood....my boss turns out to be a really lovely person. Couldn't have made me feel more welcome, even offering to grab a coffee and show me the local salad bar at lunch! Being English as well was a massive relief for me...let alone to find they were from my hometown of Plymouth! This just added to the warming of the office and enabled to quickly feel like a had a place here.
As for being broken in easily though I can see that is not the way! My first assignment was to read a report to get an idea of what standard is acceptable and what is expected! Ok I thought, 10 mins I thought........268 pages and about 2 hours later I had finally done it! To see the scale of what was being done by the office was simply mind blowing and to think that one day I will be able to turn around and say.."Yeah, I was part of that" will be incredible!
Tomorrow I believe I will be correcting the English of some reports, this will be be interesting. I mean how does the old saying go? "I am enginer, I am enjineer, I am enginner, I DO MATH!" lol. All the same I am eager to see what tomorrow brings!
After such a long day at the office I was taken to my company apartment....mine for the next month and it is AMAZING! Well its missing a few home comforts but hell there was a 52inch plasma TV, a gym and 2 swimming pools and best of all Guinness in the fridge! Perfect.
After a short while I decided that it was time to get something to eat! So off I went to quickly nip out and get a weeks worth of shopping! What a joke that was; one could call it a journey in its own right! After dancing with a few cars on the crossings, and trekking for 30mins to the lulu center by Hamad Medical City, in the 23°C heat, I was bitterly disappointed to find that I couldn't even pick up a loaf of bread there! So having backed up on my self I walked another 30 mins to find a small family food store where again the shear little choice of food was disgraceful. I couldn't even make a meal out of what you could buy...just bits of odds and sods, i.e. Tomato Ketchup and Bottled Water perhaps with a seasoning of tinned kidney beans...lovely!
So long story short my 2 hour outing successfully amounted to me returning with a bottle of shower gel, carton of UHT milk, cotton buds and batteries and chicken hotdogs.....delicious. Funny thing is after this ordeal turns out there are two big hypermarkets about 5 mins from the apartment in the opposite direction I walked! Morale of the story...use a freaking map!
Anyway better hit the sack ready for another day,
Goodbye!
Sean
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