2015

Dear friends,

Thank you for your birthday wishes. Since I am away from my college friends for the first time in 4 years, I am including a short update about myself. As most of us have started our first jobs, I invite you to share a quick update to help us stay connected.

I joined Schlumberger around 5 months ago, so I’m pretty junior to most of you. I had a short training stint in Abu Dhabi for 3 months. That was without a doubt one of the best times of my life. Had lots and lots of fun. UAE is an amazing place and I suggest if you get a chance, try to spend a day or two there. Dubai was a whole new experience. It was a first for many things for me there. Pubs, Clubs, EDMs, adventure sports, and all the luxury.

I had a two weeks vacation after that and since then, I’m in a small town called Duliajan near the oldest oil field in India in the northern most part of assam. It’s extreeeemely remote and equally beautiful. Life is very different here. Whenever there is oil being drilled, the client calls us to do some operations (such as improve productivity, well characterization and so on), and I go with my crew and my massive mobile station to handle it. There is absolutely no working hours. Some days are 6 hours long and some are 36. We being only 4 engineers in out office, are extremely short handed for the whole of north east operations. At the same time, since we are the only ones in office, we are pretty closely knit and try to have a great time.

Life as a Field Engineer gives one the opportunity to peek into the other side of the world. While we for the most of our lives have been living and spending time on the consumer side, the production side is different in it’s own way. For starters, there are no weekends. I’ll be working for 60 - 75 days straight and then take a vacation for a few weeks. The place is as remote as it can get with oil fields spread across tea plantations and forest reserves. The hardships caused by security concerns in the area have forced us to travel in a convoy with army personnel only. Any celebrations such as festivals and birthdays may or may not even take place as we are always “on call” status for the client.

The recent crash in the oil prices have had significant effects in the petroleum service industry. Quite a few jobs are at stake including mine. The company tries to facilitate us as much as it can. If only we had some time to get pampered in the luxury!

On the whole, I’m loving my job. the responsibility given to us in such a short tenure exceeds my imagination. In some time i may feel bored as it can get tedious to do the same services again and again. If it gets too repetitive, I may think about changing jobs or studying further.

How is your first job treating you? Let me know.

Krishna Rao