Bearings

tuesdays in turkmenistan: what a nail biter

2012-02-14T21:05:00.000+05:00

Reminiscent of the 2000 U.S. presidential election with recounts and hanging chads, this past Sunday's presidential election in Turkmenistan was a true nail biter. However, in the end, the incumbent president won his bid for re-election against a field of spirited opponents. Voters were no doubt swayed by his diplomatic leadership for the past five years and powerful oratory skills that led some to call the president a Turkmen Stephen Douglas. The president was able to carry the razor thin election against his next closest opponent by the narrowest of margins: 97% to 1.2%. (Sorry, the 82% guess is not close enough to win the prize.)

It is clear that the president was able to rally not just his base, but also the base of everyone else as voters turned up in droves to the tune of a 97% turnout. It is possible that some "corrections" had to be made to the count to compensate for the unusually cold weather that may have encouraged some to stay at home. And the fraud. The massive, massive fraud.

I view the 97% turnout with more suspicion than the 97% vote share for the president. This is based on what I perceived to be the challenges of being able to vote and just what it means for turnout to be at 97%. Let's start with the latter. A 97% turnout rate means only about 1 in 33 eligible voters did not vote. With suffrage for all citizens 18 and older, that's a large base of eligible voters, even in a country of only 5 million. Why someone might not vote could be for a myriad of reasons which we'll get to in a moment, but for every single person who does not vote, it means 32 other people must vote. That's a very high bar to clear. So, what might be the challenges to getting 32 out of 33 people to vote? As already mentioned, the weather was quite cold on Sunday so perhaps many sick or elderly stayed at home. Some people had to work (even on a Sunday) and might not have had reasonable time or access to vote, especially in my industry if they were in the field or offshore. Voting also required your domestic passport which is like a national ID card. However, it needed to show your "home" address but if you're in the middle of a move like one person I spoke with, then you need to turn your passport into the authorities so your new address can be registered. This of course then leaves you without the passport and no way to vote. Others said you needed your ID to match your current address and since many engineers here are from other parts of the country where they maintain a permanent address, they could not vote while here. Again, these are perhaps challenges that disproportionately face people I work with given their professions and mobility, but they are still obstacles towards a 97% turnout. Finally, the most compelling and likely reason for why turnout was not at 97% is why bother voting if you already know the outcome. Every single person I spoke with, whether they planned to vote or not, knew what the outcome of the election would be. That's surely one of the most compelling disincentives for voting.

As to the matter of the president winning 97% of the vote, that too raises some eyebrows, though far less than you might suspect at first glance. As compared to the turnout figure, I think it's more likely that the actual vote share was closer to 97% than the actual turnout was to 97%. Of course, I don't think either one was all that close to 97%, but there is a distinction to be made. Why might the percentage of votes be closer? Simply put, who else is there to vote for? Those were essentially the words from one person I spoke with. People did not know the other seven candidates, certainly not on a national level. The Commonwealth of Independent States had some voting monitors and they declared that the election was within democratic norms and there were only minor irregularities that would have had little impact on results. Of course minor irregularities would have little impact on results. That's because they pale in comparison to the massive irregularities endemic to the entire process. Of course, CIS has a history of dubious election monitoring and their concept of a democratic norm was likely crafted during the Soviet era. Still, the real driver for any sort of "irregularities" was not the way voting was conducted on election day. I am reasonably confident that the majority of people who wanted to vote and had ID were able to vote. What was irregular was the nature of the entire election cycle, not merely voting day. Yes, there were seven other candidates and there were some posters up, but none of them had anywhere near the level of exposure that the president had. No one else is on TV for several hours a day or on the front page of the newspaper every single day. (I'm almost surprised there isn't a website like this one for the president.) There were no debates and there was no campaigning. In fact, I saw more sophisticated campaigns for student body office in college than I did here. If you wanted information, you had to seek it out, but that's not easy when there are so few open sources. Thus, when it comes time to vote and it is one name you recognize and seven you know nothing about, either you will leave it blank (though someone else may later fill it in for you) or you will pick the name you know.

In the end, there's certainly no surprise with the results. The only bet was just how much of the vote the president would garner.

election day!

2012-02-12T22:11:00.000+05:00

Today was election day in Turkmenistan. For only the second time since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the people of Turkmenistan had an opportunity to "choose" their next President. Of course it's already in the bag. It was never even out of the bag. In speaking with people, or trying to speak with people, I've come to realize that many people here are reluctant to discuss politics. This is hardly surprising, though I had hoped people would be more forthcoming since I am clearly not a Kazakh spy.

While perusing for additional articles, I was mildly pleased to see news of the election had made it to the Washington Post. Further information can be found from the Financial Times and you can even see who all the other candidates are courtesy of Radio Free Europe. After learning about the stiff opposition the current President will face, the next most interesting thing about the Radio Free article was the quote from the Commonwealth of Independent States group stating that the election had "equal opportunities" for all candidates. Yes, "equal". That's only slightly more of an exaggeration than when that one network calls itself "fair & balanced".

2 more days!

2012-02-10T21:37:00.000+05:00

At work this morning, all the expats received an e-mail instructing us to keep a low profile for the next several days until Sunday's election had passed and the outcome was clear (as if we didn't already know how it will go). Of course, we already keep a low-profile. While we are technically allowed to go into town and eat at restaurants and be out of the camp, it was recommended that everyone only go out for work-related business. It's not an unreasonable request, particularly since there's no scenario in which agitating about the election would result in anything positive. Interestingly enough, three days ago there was a surprise visa registration check at the camp after dinner on Tuesday. A couple immigration officers showed up around 20:00 and all the expats had to come back to the office and I suppose demonstrate that we were actually there (as opposed to somewhere else I assume) and had our passports with valid visas.

Getting back to the election, this recent eurasianet.org piece makes an interesting assertion about the election. It suggests that the president is using the election and his "opponents" as a way to gauge which ideas are supported (or not) and what his own level of popularity (or lack thereof) is like. When the voting is done, I suspect there will be two very critical tallies that are determined, though only one will be released for general consumption. The first is the officially released figure that the people here, that the world hears, and that if it's at 82% for the president, then someone "wins" a trip to Turkmenistan. The second is the actual count. The one that lacks all the fuzzing, adjustments, and rounding that will occur as votes are counted, added, collated, and rolled up from city to province to state to the capital. It's quite possible that this figure of the true vote cannot be known depending on how many separate officials make their various "corrections" along the way.

In continuing to chat-up people about the election, while many said they would vote, few seemed to believe in the true legitimacy of the process. I wonder if that will show up in the unofficial numbers.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: election soon

2012-02-07T14:01:00.000+05:00

This coming Sunday's election fascinates me. It's a sort of firsthand look at how democracy functions (or doesn't) in another part of the world. The particular aspects that are most compelling are whether the people here believe in the process. It's one thing for Americans to feel jaded about the democratic process with the influence of money that lobbyists and Super PACs bring, but it's something else entirely when this is just the second post-Soviet era presidential election. Not only does the country lack a tradition of democracy and regular elections, it also lacks free press and multiple political parties. Indeed, all eight of the official candidates are from the incumbent's party. One cannot help but believe that they are carefully chosen straw men to give the election the outward appearance of legitimacy.

I have been trying to chat up anyone I can about the subject, both local and expatriate employees. Inevitably, I end up talking with people who are disproportionately younger and more educated than the average Turkmen voter. Still, the sentiment amongst people I have spoken with is that the election is largely for show. It has multiple candidates, posters, and maybe even whistle-stop tours during this final week. However, it has not exactly inspired the electorate into a frenzy of patriotism and fervor for the democratic process.

One interesting aspect that is contrary to at least American elections is that if this is a fairly administered election, young people might vote at higher rates than older people. This is only plausible if the election is fully open. However, the polls might show near 100% turnout along with some zombies, erm, recently deceased also managing to cast ballots. It's possible, despite the people I have spoken with, that the youth might believe more in the process and want to affect change. Further, older people here do not have the same history of being able to vote like their American counterparts who turn out in droves. Of course, the youth might also be the most cynical about the process given their relative education and exposure to the rest of the world.

I will continue to chat people up about the election including afterwards once results are out. I am curious to know if people voted, who they voted for (if they are comfortable sharing that), what the polls were like, did they feel like their vote was able to be cast secretly, what did it take to register to vote, how efficiently run were the polls (though I already know the answer to this one based on how efficient everything else is), etc. If you're interested in the process, what else should I ply people for?

Jokingly, I have suggested that the expats start a pool on what percentage of the vote the President will capture in what we largely assume will be his inevitable reelection. Will it be a massive landslide (>90%) that demonstrates the unity of the country or will it be a more "modest" victory (60-70%) to give the election an air of legitimacy to outsiders? Anyone care to venture forth with a guess?

one more week

2012-02-05T14:16:00.000+05:00

One more week until next Sunday's presidential election. None of the candidates have made whistle-stop tours yet, but I'm sure there will be a few in this final week before the election.

riding the rails turkmen style

2012-02-04T09:26:00.000+05:00

I had to be in Ashgabat the last few days and was supposed to catch yesterday's flight back to Balkanabat. It was not to be as some serious weather swept in from the Caspian canceling both the flight to Balkanabat and all flights to Turkmenbashy which is also in the western half of the country. Several other domestic flights were canceled but most international flights appeared to be operating based on what I saw while at the airport. And yes, even though we all knew the flight would be canceled, we still had to go to the airport and wait until it was officially canceled in case by some miracle they were able to clear the runway in Balkanabat. After the cancellation we went back to the office but Ashgabat traffic was a mess. What normally takes less than 30 minutes took more than an hour as we trundled through the traffic created by the snow and ice and malfunctioning stoplights. People in Ashgabat were saying that they had not seen this much snow in 20 years. Perhaps there is some hyperbole baked in to statements like that, but Ashgabat was ill-equipped to handle the weather. Despite the wide boulevards and fancy looking intersections, the ill-designed roundabouts and lack of protected left-turns manage to exacerbate even moderate traffic. Combined with the weather and Ashgabat traffic was slowed to a crawl.

It is fortunate we were even able to get train tickets because with all domestic flights to the west canceled, many more people than normal were trying to take the train, mainly to Balkanabat and Turkmenbashy. It was also good that there were four of us. (Actually, there were eight of us, four expats and four local employees on the train, but I mean four of us in the cabin together.) It did mean all four beds were taken and there was not much room for maneuvering, but it also meant that when people walked by and opened the door looking for an empty bunk to sleep on, they would see the room was full and keep on moving. And yes, not everyone has a cabin. In fact, not everyone has much of a seat. There are some cars with seats more akin to what you would see on a bus and no beds. Then, in the hallways, there are little fold-out seats that just have a place to sit. Imagine a little jump-seat that flight attendants sometimes use on smaller planes. Now imagine that it is even smaller than that with no back other than the wall. People in seats like that are always looking for a place to lie down and sleep. Anyway, though it was rather crowded with four of us in the cabin, it was good to not have an empty bed. Also, there's not much need for lots of room because after eating and using the restroom, I stayed in my bed the rest of the trip. With the nighttime travel, there's not much to see and all four of us slept almost the entire trip. I woke up a few times, usually from an unusually graceless stop. And though the heater seemed to struggle to keep up with the cold outside, it was a pretty restive journey.

There is a sort of secondary bonus that comes from being a night trip. There is no food or drink service available on the train. You can bring your own food and drink, but if you forget then you're just going to have to deal with not having food for the next 11 hours. And while we brought a bit to eat, I consider it a benefit to not have to pack a bunch of food (since we'd be sleeping most of the time) along for the ride.

In fact, we all slept so well we almost slept past our stop. I woke up around 0615 and the train was stopped and since in theory the train arrives to Balkanabat at 0600, I thought it was our stop. It was not. We had stopped, though I am not sure why, at the edge of town. Then the train inspector came to knock on our door anyway to let us know our stop was coming so it would have been unlikely to actually miss our stop. Still, if we had somehow missed our stop, we'd end up being stuck in Turkmenbashy for an unknown length of time. With a room only about 7 feet deep and six feet wide, it took some shuffling to get all our stuff and bodies out of the room. It is fortunate that the base is close to the train station. We had been told the night before as we were departing from Ashgabat that the roads were so bad that they could not send a driver to pick us up at the station and that we would have to walk. Now, it's less than a 10-minute walk normally, but if the roads are bad enough that they cannot send a driver, then it's also going to be a difficult walk for anyone with luggage. I only had my backpack but the two guys with suitcases definitely struggled through the snow.

It was by no means glamorous, but the train cabin had the beds stacked like bunk beds with two on each side, blankets, lights, and heat. It was a nice and cozy box. And cheap too, at least compared to train tickets in Europe. Each individual ticket only cost about 3 USD. Seriously, for 12 USD, we can send four people from Ashgabat to Balkanabat. Still, despite that great value, it is not the best place for couch surfers, backpackers, and anyone seeking a cheap no-frills vacation.

who owns shares?

2012-02-02T13:39:00.000+05:00

Related to what I wrote about on Saturday about the earnings release, it is interesting to take note of who holds a stake in Schlumberger. The short answer is that the largest stake holders by far are institutional holders and mutual funds. According to the 2011 Proxy Statement, executive management and members of the board of directors account for about 0.5% of total stock ownership. While high levels of insider ownership are often viewed as a positive sign about their faith in shareholder value and control of the company, it's hardly surprising that insiders control such a relatively small portion of the outstanding shares. Given the company's size, age, and lack of family control, it would be unusual for any insider to have amassed even a 1% stake in the company which would be equivalent to about $1 billion. If you dig deeply enough, you'll see that there used to be a member of the board who held about 32 million shares which was good for a 2.7% stake at the time. In the 2008 Proxy Statement, Didier Primat held or controlled those shares until his passing later that year. Unsurprisingly, he was a descendant of the founding brothers. With his passing, it is most likely that those shares are now split amongst several people (who are not on the board) and/or in trusts. The only remaining current board member with familial ties is now Henri Seydoux who is both relatively new to the board (since 2009) and holds relatively few shares (4,500 as of the 2011 Proxy Statement).

Note: All Proxy Statements are publicly available online from the company website (and probably from the SEC).

natural gas in the U.S.

2012-02-01T11:58:00.000+05:00

After last Saturday's post on earnings (which was admittedly uninspired) I've been thinking a lot about the overall business outlook with an eye cast towards the U.S. market today. The seasonal nature of the natural gas business in the U.S. is not something most people ever need to know about. For most people, their relationship with gas is that when they turn on their stove or fireplace or flame thrower, it has a supply of gas and they pay for that gas each month. Or perhaps they have a large propane tank and they pay whenever they have the tank refilled. Either way, it's much like other utilities such as electricity and water. You use it, you pay for it, and you don't give much thought to where it comes from. The answer is that it comes from the ground and then, after traveling through a series of tubes that are surprisingly similar to the internet's tubes, it ends up in your house or CNG vehicle or super-villain lair. OK, part of that answer was not strictly accurate. Nor does this address how or why the natural gas business is seasonal.

The answer is in this chart from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That is a chart of underground natural gas storage in the U.S. During the year, gas production is roughly constant which you can see if you head here and scroll down until you find the Daily Suppy/Demand Graph [sic] with a typo reminiscent of some of my best work. The total supply is roughly flat all year round, but consumption varies widely going through a cycle each year of being low in the summer to high in the winter. To accommodate this elasticity in demand, a good portion of gas produced in the summer is stored underground until it is needed in the winter. This cycle happens every year and gives the underlying industry much of its seasonality.

Each year, the industry watches quite attentively throughout the winter to see what is happening with storage. This year, if you revisit the first chart you will see that current storage is at a very high level for this time of year. While that chart only shows ranged bands for the last five years, storage levels are indeed at record highs and are actually about 20% over last year's levels. This has been brought on by a combination of a very mild winter in much of the country and improved production techniques that have allowed for the faster production of large quantities of gas. Tomorrow (relative to the day this is being posted) is when the previous week's figures will be released and you can see if there's been any closure of that gap now that at least some of the country is starting to experience a proper winter.

The high storage levels have understandably led to weak spot market prices. This is not to say that you as an individual are paying less for gas since you are probably tied to some contract. In fact, from this chart here you will see that residential customers pay more than consumer users who in turn pay more than industrial users and power plants. It's not that you're getting screwed (sort of), but you probably don't have the resources nor consumption levels to make negotiating a better individual price worthwhile. Anyway, the spot prices are down as seen on the second graph down under Spot Prices Graph. In fact, from their peak in mid-2008, spot prices are down to less than a quarter of peak levels.

These weak prices are of course cause for much consternation amongst natural gas drillers and producers. No one really wants to be producing more and being paid less. Some drillers, including heavyweight Chesapeake have signaled that they will shut-in some production and reduce drilling in an attempt to remedy the situation. Whether such moves will achieve their goals are not clear, but they have a very limited number of levers at their disposal to pull (and I cannot help but think that only the Fed with their prime interest rate lever is more limited). This announcement was made two weeks ago, coincidentally on the same day that Halliburton reported relatively strong earnings. Unfortunately for HAL, their own good news was washed over by the concerns surrounding Chesapeake's announcement and HAL's stock price tumbled that day. I'd pretend to be sympathetic, but this is the internet where you're pretty much obligated to be an anonymous jerk. In reality, it will be interesting to see how many other major drillers follow CHK's lead and also curtail U.S. drilling in 2012. That will trickle down to the service companies in a rather significant way and with Halliburton's relatively large exposure to the North American market, this is why they took such a large hit over this news.

What does all this mean for natural gas prices in the future? If there is an attempt to prop up prices through reduced production, how effective will it be and can you do something about it? The short answer is that no one is sure and you as an individual hold little away over market forces. Unless you're super fabulously wealthy. Are you super fabulously wealthy? If you are, I have this Nigerian prince friend who wants to go in for half of a business venture but due to some legal issues you'll have to put up your half of the money first. If you're not super fabulously wealthy and are looking for a somewhat legitimate investment, you could buy into the United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG) which is an ETF that seeks to mirror the spot price of natural gas in the U.S. In a sense, if you look at the five-year chart it's incredibly cheap. You will see a similar trend with another similar ETF called GAZ and that five-year chart which shows a peak in mid-2008 and a brutal slide down since then. The problem with both those funds extends beyond the weakness in natural gas pricing. With the way they try to mirror natural gas prices through the purchase of options contracts, the up- and down-sides are magnified. Additionally, there was a period of time for UNG where it had become such a large fund, that it's purchasing habits of options contracts was starting to have unintended influence on the options market. Personally, and I am not an actual investment adviser*, prices seem close to the bottom, but I'm not sure they will meaningfully rebound for some time. Even with curtailed domestic production, LNG imports are waiting in the wings making supply readily available. I guess what I'm trying to say is that you should buy gold. Lots and lots of gold because it never goes down in value**.

* In addition to not being an investment adviser, I am also not technically a doctor despite my nickname. Nor can I represent you in a court of law. Well, unless you're me since I can represent myself, which in that case would be you, but the odds that you are me and only just now realizing this are staggeringly low.

** Except for 1980 to 2001, so perhaps you'd be interested in some Dutch tulips instead.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: report season

2012-01-31T12:03:00.000+05:00

It appears to be report season. Many NGOs have issued various reports in the last few months, either for the end of 2011 or the start of 2012, with rankings and/or assessments on various metrics of the countries of the world. Suffice to say, it's actually quite astounding how poorly most of the world is run. In my quest to find some sources and links via my good friend Jimmy's website Wikipedia, I came across a partial aggregation of some of these survey.

While these are not all the same surveys I'm highlighting below, the table and maps with their color-coding offer a quick visual summary of the world. It's worth noting that the only two countries in the uppermost level in all four of those surveys are New Zealand and Switzerland. Meanwhile, several countries managed to fill out the lower levels in all the surveys and unless I missed any, they are Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, Myanmar (Burma), North Korea, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. (Somalia and Sudan were not assessed in all of the surveys, but had they been, both countries would probably be placed in the lowest grouping as well.) Through my own reading, I had already come across the Freedom House and Democracy Index reports. Additionally, I have seen a recent report from Human Rights Watch, another from Reporters Without Borders on press freedom, plus something I already wrote about from Transparency International on corruption.

I want to go over those five I found (again, not fully overlapping with the four listed here) and see where Turkmenistan ranks. (Hint: It did not do as well as New Zealand.)

* The Human Rights Watch released their 2012 World Report earlier this month. This report does not contain a strict ranking of countries, but instead has a six-page summary which states very clearly that Turkmenistan is "one of the world's most repressive countries." You can jump straight to the section on Turkmenistan here without a download.

* Freedom House also released their most recent report last month on 2012 Freedom in the World. Turkmenistan was rated as "Not Free" and received the lowest possible score (7 out of 7) in both political rights and civil liberties measurements.

* Reporters Without Borders also recently released their Press Freedom Index for 2011-2012 and Turkmenistan sneaked in at 177 out of 179. This is hardly surprisingly for a country where about 1% of the people have access to the internet and what is accessible is censored. Additionally, it should tell you something when the national newspaper always has a picture of the president on the front page above the fold every single day.

* The folks at the Economist Intelligence Unit (related to the Economist magazine) put out their Democracy Index for 2011 survey near the end of last year. Turkmenistan was ranked 165 out of 167 countries besting only North Korea and Chad though some countries were not assessed.

* I wrote about this before, but Transparency International released their 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index back in November. Turkmenistan tied with two other countries for 177 out of 182.
In my original entry, I noted that Turkmenistan has been moving the same direction in this survey for the past four years.

With less than two weeks until only the second post-Soviet era presidential election, I watch with eager interest.

the little victories

2012-01-30T20:57:00.001+05:00

It may have taken a year, but I was finally reimbursed for an expense claim at work related to my 2010 travel allowance. Lost in the shuffle of a change in managers, a change in location, a change in HR personnel, a change in policies, and a change in status, I have secured my victory.

presidential election 2 weeks away

2012-01-29T14:00:00.000+05:00

No, not the 2012 U.S. presidential election. I'm talking about the 2012 Turkmenistan presidential election, undoubtedly the most democratic event this side of the Warsaw Pact. Several of us were out to dinner the other night (outside the camp!) and there was a notification about the election outside the restaurant. It was a big poster showing all the candidates and had some statement from each of them. Interestingly enough, it was only in Russian, not both Russian and Turkmen. Considering how much the government has pushed for Turkmen in the schools in the last couple years, it's an interesting observation and commentary that most of the older generations know Russian much better than Turkmen. Anyway, two more weeks until the election. I have a sinking suspicion that we will not see a whistle stop train tour pass through Balkanabat. Nor will there be any sports books in Vegas taking wagers on the outcome of this election. That's really too bad since I've got some inside information on who is going to win.

earnings

2012-01-28T21:16:00.000+05:00

Schlumberger announced 2011 Q4 earnings last Friday. As always, the good folks at Seeking Alpha have a transcript of the conference call and Q&A session available here. Alternatively, you can download a .mp3 from SLB’s public investor relations page.

You can find any number of articles on what the company and business outlook look like and what’s going on with stock performance. Personally, I tend to use Yahoo! Finance as my starting point when looking for how or why SLB is in the news. Given that, I’m not going to dwell much on the company performance (not bankrupt like some) or the business outlook (which looks like this). Instead, it’s all about the Q&A session with this most recent one being the first without former CEO and still chairman of the board (until April) Andrew Gould being an active participant.

For several years now, I have been reading the transcripts and listening to the call recordings. I often let the Q&A session play in the background on my computer while I work. Gould was (and still is) very well-respected within the industry having helmed Schlumberger for the previous eight years and overseeing its rise back to industry prominence. For many years, it was him and his dulcet voice during the Q&A sessions after the earnings announcements. He has now moved on to join the Board of Directors at BG Group and is tagged to be their next chairman sometime after he steps down as chairman of Schlumberger in April. Anyway, I typically found his answers quite illuminating both of the direction of the company as well as the overall industry. Combined with how well spoken he generally was, listening to him field questions was rather entertaining in a certain educational sense.

On this most recent conference call, I found the Q&A session with the new CEO Paal Kibsgaard less interesting than previous calls. It was partly to do with the questions themselves which I generally thought were not all that interesting or pointed. And there was nothing wrong with any of the answers either. Nonetheless, the call failed to spark the same level of eager interest from me that it used to engender. The reasons are most likely three-fold. First, the new CEO is simply not as well spoken as Gould. There are a couple different reasons for why this could be, but regardless of the specifics, I expect this to get better with time. The second reason is that 2012 is looking like a relatively straightforward year. There is always uncertainty in this business, but this could be the most predictable year in the past five or six. Thus, questions and subsequent answers about the business outlook didn’t have much meat to them. Combined with the first point, I also think the Kibsgaard erred to the side of caution and preferred to give less, rather than more information. This left some of the answers feeling a bit bland, but it’s also easier to put out a press release with more information than trying to unsay something. The third, and probably most significant reason that the Q&A session lacked punch, is that I know more than I used to in the past. My personal understanding of the business is much broader than it was even two years ago. This has been motivated by a mix of more time working, being overseas and seeing different operating environments, and my current and previous locations which have given me better insight into the other segments and product lines outside of my own.

We’ll see what happens three months from now when the next call comes around. Perhaps it will be more exciting, though that’s not necessarily a good thing.

rain

2012-01-28T13:37:00.000+05:00

It is raining today. Rain, not snow. Given that this is a desert, rain is always a welcome sight to me. It helps break the monotony of the place and it also means that it won’t be miserably cold for at least the next day or two. That is all.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: back in the box

2012-01-24T14:41:00.000+05:00

Being in Turkmenistan is much like being in a box. Of course, one could argue that anywhere on the planet, or even the universe, is like being in a box, just much larger. Still, while Turkmenistan is a good-sized box in it's own right, it is quite a bit more boxy than most other places. It has some straight borders, is mostly empty, and much if it tastes like cardboard. Ok, perhaps it's not strictly a box, but if it was, then it would be a very plain one and the problem with plain boxes, aside from being boring, is that they are inherently uninspiring. It is difficult to feel particularly motivated when most of your surroundings are rather lifeless and devoid of interest.

While I am here I end up spending a lot of time by myself. Being able to keep my own counsel has been a necessary part of work since I first started. In the camp, while I'm in close physical proximity to many people, keeping my own company is very important to my sanity. Also, since smoking is allowed in all the common recreation areas, I usually dislike spending time there. The smoking thing is very important to me and it has really brought out how much I positively detest smoking and view it as something with no possible redeeming social benefit. Smoking is one of the few absolute deal breakers I have when it comes to relationships and anyone else I plan to hang around with any significant amount of time. In the end, my time alone is quite significant and when in my cargo container-esque room, it certainly holds the potential to be rather depressing if you don't know how to be good at being alone. Perhaps that sounds odd, but some people seem generally terrible at being by themselves. There's a difference between being bored and needing/seeking continuous contact with people. You simply have to be okay enough with yourself to spend lots of time with just yourself. It sounds simple enough, but I feel like it's a skill some people do not have.

Anyway, this box here. It's also becoming quite the sandbox to borrow a term from video game parlance. Turkmenistan is in its own world here. Perhaps it's just the fact some more recent reports have been published that cast a skeptical eye (to be very polite) on the situation here, but Turkmenistan feels increasingly like some sort of Hotel California for locals. (I do feel like I can check out from here.) When I have time, perhaps by next Tuesday, I want to have gathered up all the recent reports and try to explain what I see with my own eyes. Plus, the election is soon and that will surely be interesting, in a certain sense of the word.

Also, for what it's worth, I'm still in Ashgabat. Today's flight to Balkanabat was cancelled due to snow in Balkanabat. Something like 2-3cm was on the ground so apparently the airport there did it's best Madagascar impression and shut down everything.

this too shall pass

2012-01-23T16:18:00.000+05:00

This too shall pass.

frankfurt airport

2012-01-22T15:58:00.000+05:00

Back in my home away from home (Ashgabat staff house) away from home (Balkanabat camp) away from home (California, more or less), I'm in Frankfurt airport, where I might spend more time here, and certainly see more people than anywhere else I regularly go. I don't have much to say but have a few minutes to spend watching a giant circular BAYER sign slowly rotate. If you happen to pass through terminal B here, you'll know exactly which sign I am talking about.

I always find it most curious just how many Lufthansa 747s I am able to see each time I am here. Without trying particularly hard, I already saw seven distinctly different 747s which is quite a few since they only have about 20 in their entire fleet. One time, I definitively saw nine and it might have been ten, but as one plane had just landed and I might have later double-counted it on the taxiway. I just sort of figured that at any given moment, since they are such long-haul planes, most of them would be in the air or at another airport. When you think about how many different planes are required to continuously service a daily route like FRA-SFO, then it just seems peculiar how many happen to be here. However, it could just be a matter of timing during the day and I happen to be here during the few hours that many are being turned around at the same time.

Anyway, time to go. By the time I land in "the best -stan" (which would be an excellent tourism slogan) and get to the staff house in Ashgabat, the Patriots-Ravens game should be nearly over and Niners-Giants will be a couple hours from starting. Alas, I am quite certain that I will not find the game on television. Plus, since it will be 2AM, I'll need to sleep anyway.

tuesdays not in turkmenistan: saturday edition

2012-01-21T13:30:00.000+05:00

What can I say? My schedule and regularity pretty much go out the window when I'm back Stateside and trying to cram a couple months worth of social life into a couple weeks. Also, it's also very tiring when I'm at work and I mostly just want to rest and rest and then rest some more when I am back.

For all practical purposes, I was away for eight weeks before coming back right before New Year's Eve. I am increasingly understanding of the 7x3 rotation and why seven weeks is more than enough time in a camp. Amusingly enough, I'm going to try and stretch my coming rotation out as much as possible, but I think it will still result in missing some social engagements in April/May. However, we've had some personnel changes and I'm not sure what the schedule is going to look like now and how much accommodation is possible. My time in Turkmenistan might actually be easier to bear if I was still working in the field and getting out of the office more. Instead, it's room, work, room, work, repeat, etc. Additionally, there's no such thing as a properly staffed location in this company. Either we have too many and need to fire or transfer people or we have too few and don't necessarily need to hire, but instead need to get more out of the people we currently have. Combined with the relatively high-stress nature of the business where the omnipresent sense of time equating to money (except for the state companies!), the feeling that the next mistake could very well be your last with your employer, and that you're living in what is essentially a metal box for seven weeks can really drive you a bit batty. On some level, you have to, well, I don't want to say "not care", but you do need to disengage and draw some boundaries.

Living at the camp, the lines that most people think of when it comes to work/life balance and separation really don't exist. Everything there is essentially work and that constant grind is what is so taxing. It is also ultimately unhelpful and counter-productive if some boundaries are not staked out. I can tell when I'm not productive. More importantly, I can tell when fatigue is setting in because fatigue largely transmutes itself into apathy with me. But the boundary drawing is left to everyone to figure out on their own and it's admittedly something I'm pretty terrible at and for those who have had to put up with that fact, I'm sorry. Being back this time, and partially pulled along by some work computer issues, helped me at least put a first stake in figuring out those boundaries.

This time around, I did relatively little work at home. One could argue I did almost no work, which is sort of the point of days off. I replied to just enough e-mails and filled out enough forms and spreadsheets to avert what I hope are any serious issues. It felt good to not work, but the creeping worry is always there since regardless of how things are supposed to be, it's my mess to deal with when I get back so one eye is always trying to keep a lookout. Still, I stayed busy with plenty that was not work this time around and I'm very happy about that. I had something to do or someone to see almost every day I was in town and that's a good sign. I want to keep staking out some more, well, stakes, until I have boundaries setup between work and everything else. Let's see how that goes while I'm away, which starts in a couple hours. Until then, I'm out until probably late March or early April.

tuesdays not in turkmenistan: explaining the place

2012-01-10T23:46:00.000+05:00

People often ask me what it's like in Turkmenistan. I was also asked the same questions about Congo and Gabon, though I was back in the U.S. less often so I was also asked questions about those places less often. It's perfectly reasonably to be asked about Turkmensitan. After all, most people have never been, will never go, and never hear about it in the news. I offer what I am sure are woefully inadequate answers describing terrain (mostly desert), government (autocratic), language (Russian, Turkmen), religion (moderate Islam), and economy (oil & gas revenue) while never being able to quite convey the essence of the place. People also often ask about the food, probably because the times I am usually around other people are for meals. The food is food.

In all fairness, I think my answers are not so bad. I offer you up this challenge. How would you describe your home i 4-5 sentences? For starters, how would you even conclude what constitutes your home? The city, state, country, region, time zone, county? Now imagine describing the essence of that place (or all of them) to someone totally unfamiliar with all aspects of that place. It's really hard, isn't it? If you think it is easy, then you are probably leaving out hugely important pieces of information or have made lots of assumptions about how similar your home is to the home of the stranger who wants to know about yours. You can describe the who and the what and the where. But the real essence of a place is in the why. That's where the cultural and historical context of a place and how it come to be the way it is are found. And that why is also what is so hard to properly understand while you visit and live in places that are not your home.

tuesdays not in turkmenistan: on hiatus

2012-01-03T23:43:00.000+05:00

I just got back into California a couple days ago and I'm just too tired and a bit burned out to blog. Be back next week.

live blogging from frankfurt

2011-12-30T12:14:00.000+05:00

Ok, it's a lie. I'm only online for an hour with intermittent updates, but I'm just going to type whatever I feel like here for the remainder of my internet time. Actually, I think it's a travesty that Frankfurt Airport does not offer free Wi-Fi for users. Then again, neither does SFO. Actually, it's a definite first-world problem that I would even dare to call non-free Wi-Fi a travesty. It's barely a problem in the grand scheme of things. Of course, it's not a fifth-world problem either. One may ask what a fifth-world problem is. Oh, google it and find out but I can tell you now it's weird and freaky and you're not going to understand. Also, it's just a big joke.

I'm actually waiting for my work e-mail to download. It takes a while to get Outlook to sync with the Exchange server. But when it does, bam! Forty e-mails in the last 12 hours, most of which were during the middle of the night. Right before I left the office yesterday I received some good news about the difficulties with a particular well. Major difficulties have passed, though they could reoccur.

When we land in Frankfurt we don't get a normal gate. I suppose Baku/Ashgabat doesn't rate. Instead, the plane parks in the boonies of the airport out by the cargo terminal and we get bussed in. Seriously, the planes next to us are always all cargo planes. How can I tell? Cargo planes don't have windows. This morning's bus ride seemed longer than usual and I wish I got airline miles for the bus ride which seemed like a good three miles. I need every last mile and what I do with them is none of your concern.

Ok, e-mails either dealt with or filed away. Only about one thing that needs further follow-up which can wait until next week. There's always a bit of concern when I go on days off/vacation, mostly due to my total lack of trust in mankind. No, not that. It's just the sense of wanting to be sure things are in good hands. Actually, things are in good hands. It's a good team and most day-to-day things are relatively straightforward. The only issue is that it's the end of the year so there are some end-of-year items that always linger.

So I watched Harry Potter 8, also known as the final film of the Harry Potter series and Cowboys and Aliens on the way here from Ashgabat. I had to get in my movie watching on my first flight since my next leg is on an older 747 with overhead screens so the only films they will show will be family-friendly. Last time, it was Cars 2 and some other blather. Harry Potter 8 was fine. I suppose I should really read the books if I want to understand all the subtle details, but I think I finally figured out the big picture. They're wizards. As for Cowboys and Aliens, my goodness was that awful. Harrison Ford is just going through the motions at this point. First, Indian Jones 4 and then this tripe? C'mon, you were Han Solo and you shot first and I don't care what any revisionist historian has to say about that. Also, Daniel Craig's American accent is quite peculiar. Not bad, just peculiar. The rest of the film was a train wreck of different ideas, non-existent character development, terrible dialogue and just bad writing. I just realized it's actually a lot like a bad reverse version of Avatar. Since I know none of you will watch C&A, it's basically about aliens kidnapping people to learn about human weaknesses while also mining gold. How is that not like Avatar where humans go to an alien planet, try to mingle with the aliens in their avatar forms, while mining the most obtainable element on the planet? It even had a turncoat alien, albeit from a different species helping the humans much like how the human protagonist in Avatar helped the aliens. Just terrible. But I regret nothing.

I always pick-up an Economist when I fly. It makes me feel like a real adult and I want something to read on the plane. However, this time I feel cheated because the issue is so thin. Also, I'm already aware Kim Jong Il died and there ain't no party like a Pyongyang party. And yet I still bought this week's issue. I've got my flying rituals to uphold.

Anyway, time is about out so I'll be going now. I still have another hour until boarding but I'll be damned if I spring for another hour of internet. Plus, most regular readers should be asleep by now and by the time you read this, I'll be somewhere over Canada on my way to SFO.

55 days

2011-12-29T15:00:00.000+05:00

Back by popular demand, me! In less than 12 hours, I'm scheduled to depart Ashgabat, city of oddness, and begin my 24 hour journey home. Yes, 24 hours is a lot of travel time compared to the typical commute or even cross-country flight. But it's pretty amazing that I can go halfway around the world, crossing through 13 time zones, in less than a day. (No, running in a circle right at the North or South Pole does not count as crossing all the time zones!)

It will have been 55 days since I left by the time I step off the plane at SFO. Somehow, that seems inexplicably longer than saying nearly 8 weeks. And yet, 1,320 hours just seems nonsensical let alone 792,000 minutes or 4,752,000 seconds give or take a few thousand. This has been a long pull made longer by my relatively short time off last time, a series of difficult (and ongoing) operations for one client, and how few expats have been in the camp the last couple weeks. It really helps to have a good mix of people to hang out with after hours and it's just been a bit lacking lately. Plus, while I generally find Christmas/holiday parties to be terribly awkward, I'm still just a tinge bummed that I missed last Friday's party due to the canceled flight. At least I took in the hopefully once-in-a-lifetime experience of 11 hours on a train in Turkmenistan.

I'll be pretty busy my first roughly 32 hours back. Saturday night is theoretically open, but potentially subject to the whims of traffic. And after that, it's almost wide open beyond some planned new-unclage time. Perhaps some skiing, perhaps some lazing about, but definitely some Skrillex. Just kidding, I only listen to post-dubstep, whatever that is.

tuesdays in turkmenistan, the wednesday edition: ashgabat's odd

2011-12-28T20:49:00.000+05:00

Sure this is a day late and several dollars short, but by golly, I have my reasons which are totally valid and still irrelevant. It's fitting that this is a bit late since I am now in Ashgabat (again!) and I wanted to post on what I will call it's oddness. This time, I'm not here for a client visit (but I'll probably squeeze one in tomorrow). Instead, I'm here because I'm coming home! Yes! More exclamation marks! Yes, yes, yes! Ok, I'll post on going home tomorrow or something or probably not.

I don't have occasion to spend much time in Ashgabat. For the most, I'm here for a day or two at most, but sometimes not even a full 24 hours as I transit to and from Balkanabat. When I'm here, I feel like I've been somewhere very similar before and I have no idea why. I've been thinking a lot about what similar places I have been and the answer is none. Nothing is like this place in all its kitschy glory. Well, that's not strictly true. Ashgabat is quite unique in many ways, but it still possesses all the trappings of a large city like people, buildings, traffic, and large disparities in wealth. My transitory time in the city only allows me to catch small glimpses of the entire place. As far as I know, there might only be three restaurants and one shopping center in the entire city. There's obviously much more to the city, but it's all I have had occasion to visit. Much of my time being ferried from airport to office to staff house to client office is along the city's main corridors which are filled with new buildings covered with marble. The structures are certainly grandiose with official Ministry of This and Department of That all being housed in new centers and complexes and stadiums. It's like some sort of "if you build it, they will come" monument where the monument is the entire city center. I hope the IOC is paying attention.

Speaking with one colleague who grew up in Ashgabat (and he has spent the last five years working in China so he has a very interesting take on, well, everything), he says almost none of the city in its current form is recognizable from what it was like 20 years ago when the country gained independence. The gleaming white limestone and marble buildings are certainly stately, but I also wonder about the earthquake worthiness of many of these tall 12-story apartment buildings since Ashgabat sits in an earthquake prone area. Of course, many cities have undergone significant transformations in the last 20 years such as Shanghai which has a well known before photo from 1990 and more recent image from 2010 comparison often made. (Here's a different link if you want to see them on one page.)

Like so many things here, all this construction has a "correct" appearance from afar but when you get close, you realize much is not quite right. The idea is essentially correct, but the execution, which is so dependent on details, is not quite right. For whatever reason, I tend to notice such things, like when doors don't quite align, tiles are cracked because they were not spaced properly, uneven grouting, floors that don't meet evenly or smoothly, etc. This isn't a wholesale critique of craftsmanship in Turkmenistan, but I just don't think they have enough skilled labor to properly handle the amount of construction that is going on. (The same thing was going on in Port Gentil, Gabon while I was there. Many new buildings looked outwardly nice, but had many small and annoying construction defects. For what it's worth, quality there was a distinct step or two below the quality here.) I also take serious umbrage with the traffic roundabouts that are here since they are obviously attempting to emulate the spirit of a roundabout, but failing quite badly with practical execution. If you want a full explanation, you'll have to see me in person when I can draw a picture. If you mysteriously read this blog without having ever met me in person, then fantastic, I have readers or at least a reader!

Most of the rest of what I have seen in the city is older apartment buildings. Lots and lots of apartment buildings. Some are new, but many are clearly from a prior vintage. Much like in Szeged, Hungary which had many five and ten-story apartment buildings that were all essentially identical, Ashgabat is also filled with many similar apartments. It's clearly some Soviet-era design based on the efficiency of soulless concrete blocks being optimal for apartment construction. Hey, nearly a million people here and they need to live somewhere. Cheap and economical housing makes sense. This isn't the type of place which will have sprawling suburbs anytime soon.

Even though I work in the industry that funds all the construction, I still have a hard time fathoming just where all this money is coming from. It is clear that there is a lot of money in this city. A lot alot. The construction, fancy cars, public spaces, and tacky monuments all speak to the wealth that at least some have access to. What is less clear is what one million people in this city do. I realize a significant portion of any city goes to sustaining the city itself, but there still needs to be industry or tourism or finance or technology. Yes, there is a little bit of all those things. A very little bit. Instead, it's a city living off the natural resources of the country.

One final note is that for a country that is 90% Muslim, there sure are a lot of Christmas trees up in public spaces. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can call them New Year trees if you want, but I know a Christmas tree when I see one.

the joys of domestic travel

2011-12-24T13:30:00.000+05:00

Contrary to what I stated in my previous post, the holiday party was moved to last night. However, I was unable to attend due to the peculiarities of flying in Turkmenistan. The sandstorm from earlier in the week raged into a third day on Wednesday, again cancelling the flight to/from Balkanabat which normally runs Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. (Why that particular spacing of days and not something like Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday is one of the great mysteries of Turkmenistan. The explanation would probably be only slightly simpler than the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.) The Wednesday cancellation led to two things. First, they ran a special Thursday flight to Balkanabat, which was nice, but irrelevant to me since I had to be in Ashgabat by Thursday morning for the nameless client I mentioned two posts ago. Instead, and this is the second thing, I (and several others) went to Turkmenbashy to catch the last flight of the day to Ashgabat.

Unlike Balkanabat, Turkmenbashy has daily service to Ashgabat operating 3-4 flights a day. It also has a very new airport which is quite nice. For the time being it is more airport than there is capacity for, but presumably they will grow into their new digs. No doubt it is one piece of the larger plan to turn Turkmenbashy into a resort town for tourists. (Note: that article is four years old.) While it has some domestic popularity, as many colleagues seemed to enjoy going there during the summer, I am slightly skeptical of its ability to lure large numbers of foreigners. Indeed, the foreign drawing power of the city and beach is less than stellar so far. I particularly like the quote from one of the tourists, "It's ornate to the point of kitsch" as that also seems like a very apt description of Ashgabat.

Anyway, Thursday was a day in Ashgabat that was supposed to end with a train ride back to Balkanabat. However, I had to deep-six that after the second client meeting was pushed back to the end of the day making it too late to catch the train. Fortunately, or so I thought, I was able to get a ticket for the Friday flight back to Balkanabat which was somewhat odd since I had previously been told the flight was full which is why I had planned on taking the train. However, it was for naught since yesterday's flight was cancelled once again, this time not due to a sandstorm, but instead heavy fog in Balkanabat. And thus I was back to my train plan, but by missing the flight, it also meant missing the festive and no doubt socially awkward holiday party. They did pledge to run a special Saturday flight today to replace the cancelled flight from yesterday, but I'm generally happy with the train decision since I just learned that flight has also been cancelled.

The train, which left at 19:00, was 11 hours of mostly nothing. Fortunately, I had a two-person cabin to myself because they actually bought me two tickets. If you're wondering if that is cost prohibitive, no, it is not. Each ticket is about 7 USD and well worth the privacy and non-hassle of sharing a cabin with a total stranger. (For reference, a plane ticket to Balkanabat is only 20 USD since transportation is subsidized.) I slept as much of the trip as possible as there is very little to look at along unlit countryside and stops at small town rail stations. We pulled into Balkanabat at 06:15 and once again I'm back "home".

tuesdays in turkmenistan: the holidays

2011-12-20T13:18:00.000+05:00

With the coming holidays, basically Christmas and New Year's Day, a disproportionate number of expats in the camp have headed out or will soon be away for days off. I am here at least another 10 days and possibly clear into January. I try not to engage in the whole countdown thing that some expats do when their days off approach since schedules invariably change in this business and it only sets you up for disappointment. Either I leave on a given day or I stay. There's no use getting psyched up for a flight that could be nixed because of some version of client need.

Nonetheless, there is a bit of Christmas cheer around the camp with a few decorations in the office, and trees up in the rec room, office, and canteen. There are even some lights and ornaments on an evergreen outside the canteen. A sprinkle of snow and this would be paradise. Right now, we're getting a sprinkle of sand storm: day 2. Of course, some aren't so enamored with the camp. One of the locals temporarily in the camp called it "Guantanamo" and can't wait to get his own place in town. But hey, at least the food is better than that "indefinite detention center" or I assume it's better. I hope it's better?

The "holiday" party will be on Saturday. I cannot wait to see if it takes the same course as some of the classics from my time in New Mexico. And by that, I of course mean that I wonder how much everyone will drink.

the unsendables 2

2011-12-19T22:32:00.001+05:00

Well, as a continuation from yesterday's post, today was a wasted day out to a location to see some "evidence" that did not exist. Actually, it wasn't strictly wasted as there were camels out and about. They seem quite at home here in the desert. Well, it wasn't wasted because now we can use this trip as proof to the client that we are so eager and attentive to their requests that we went out to the field when they requested. Of course, I'm confident they will find a way to tell us that we didn't go at the right time even they said go as soon as possible. Or they will say we went to the wrong place even though they said go to location (instead of the office where we also went which did yield some tangentially interesting, albeit not useful, information).

With the field visit in the bag, I did fire off my e-mail (internal recipients only), but in a vastly restructured form and sans the sarcasm. Instead, it was firm and forceful making very clear my position about not giving away unnecessary concessions to a client known for what I will politely call auspicious business practices. That's the polite form. Folks back home can get the fully uncensored version in person when I get back in a couple weeks.

What I find most upsetting to me is the claim of poor work product without proof while we have our reports and files and data showing we did the job we said we would do. I would much rather have a client just say they want a discount for no particular reason than to have baseless aspersions cast about our work in an attempt to get us to concede a discount. If you want money, then fine, but don't accuse us of screwing up. Have the guts to just say what you're after.

the unsendables

2011-12-18T11:51:00.002+05:00

There's an e-mail I wrote yesterday for work that I cannot send despite it being perfectly worded. Sadly, sarcasm and business generally do not mix well. The subtleties of what make good sarcasm are difficult to properly convey in writing especially when some members of your target audience are non-native English speakers. The end result is that my three-paragraph masterpiece in response to being asked to do something that I will politely call non-constructive will never be sent. Instead, I will spend a day of my time (and another person's time) chasing down some "evidence" that a client claims to have proving some level of wrong-doing on our part.

The back-story to the entire incident would be funny because of how absurd the claim is but it has to be treated seriously because well, I'm not entirely sure why. It's akin to when the media gives equal time to two sides of an argument even though one side is some combination of wrong, ignorant, offensive or all of the above. This is one of the drawbacks to being in the service industry. Sometimes you need to politely deal with unreasonable requests while pretending they are not unreasonable. Thankfully, my time working for clients of a certain nature in Gabon taught me how to sit politely through a meeting while being blamed for something we did not do.

Anyway, my e-mail was half-informative (of facts I am sure they do not have), half-playful, half-mocking, and half-self-deprecating. If you add that up you can already see that those four halves make it twice as good as any ordinary e-mail. Alas, despite it's awesomeness, it shall never see the light of the Exchange e-mail server.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: opaque-nost?

2011-12-13T14:00:00.000+05:00

There is too much going on for a real post and that is a bit regrettable. Some interesting things have come up including the EPA study on hydraulic fracturing done in Wyoming. this has been the type of study that has been needed, but it's only a start. There are other types of studies and approaches that should be taken. If the industry is smart, it will involve itself in the process and learn how to address all concerns that have been raised. If it wishes to do otherwise, which has been the reaction thus far, then it will fight the study and claim bad science. If you don't have time to read the entire 121-age paper, you should at least know that the meat of the paper is only 42 pages and the rest is citations and data. In fact, the conclusion is only seven pages so have a gander if you're interested.

On to my semi-adopted homeland-for-tax-purposes-that-lead-me-to-claim-residency here! Transparency International recently released their latest survey results. I mentioned this last week, but finally found their actual website with their actual results. I poked around their study methodology a little and it is a bit arbitrary, but it is a Corruptions Perception Index, not a quantitative measure of actual corruption. From the bottom up, Turkmenistan is tied for fifth behind such luminaries as Somalia (which arguably doesn't even have a functioning government), North Korea, Myanmar, and Afghanistan. In recent years, the ranking has consistently moved one direction:
2010 - T5 (same countries as 2011 but add in Iraq and remove North Korea which was not assessed)
2009 - T8 (same as 2010 and add Sudan, Chad, and Uzbekistan)
2008 - T11
2007 - T14

I feel like one could make the argument that things can only get better, but much like the stock market, it is very difficult to call a bottom.

neutrality day

2011-12-12T11:30:00.000+05:00

Today is yet another glorious public holiday in Turkmenistan. This time, it is Neutrality Day celebrating the day when Turkmenistan achieved the same standard for living for its people as Switzerland. Or not. It really commemorates Turkmenistan's official position of neutrality, which is part of the reason it does not (officially) support U.S. military activities in Afghanistan. I have previously mentioned the Arch of Neutrality, which was built to commemorate this status of the country. Said Arch has since been dismantled by the current president. To give the country some credit, it is recognized as being neutral by the U.N.

Then again, Zapp Brannigan was never one to trust neutrals.

lacking insulation

2011-12-11T20:05:00.001+05:00

I've shown a few people from back home photos of my room here. It is basically a metal box with windows and a door. It's spartan, but not really any less dressed up or decorated than how my apartment in Farmington was for the first year or two I lived there. In practical terms, it has everything I need which is basically functioning bathroom facilities, a bad, dresser for clothes, and a nightstand with a lamp. As low maintenance as I can be, the lack of insulation in the room is my only real gripe. Ok, the TV hasn't been working this rotation either, but I don't even miss that. But waking up in a cold room does not exactly make me want to go to work in the morning. Of course, I'm pretty sure I'm living better than 99% of the country so a bit of perspective helps.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: anti-glasnost

2011-12-06T13:50:00.000+05:00

It's difficult to say if it's the shine wearing off a new locale or if actual changes are afoot, but there's a feeling that things are changing here, and not necessarily for the better. It could also just be that I am starting to see a bit more behind the curtain. For those of us who remember a bit of their history class or actually lived through it, there were two terms that were frequently used to describe the end of the Cold War and the changes going on in the Soviet Union. One was perestroika for restructuring. The other was glasnost to indicate openness and transparency.

Here, it feels a bit like anti-glasnost. The concept of glasnost has no place here. Infrastructure is for naught when there is no access. Our own internet at the base runs through a satellite (hence the limited bandwidth) so we don't go through the local internet. But if we did, I am sure I would be unable to access several services due to the blacklisting of many sites. Interestingly enough, while there is 3G (when it's up) available from the only mobile phone provider, their ability to block some sites is not very sophisticated.

It's more than just information and media that lack openness, but those are some of the hallmarks of a functioning democracy. The idea that people can and will be informed and use that information to make supposedly good decisions about governance is a tenet of democracy. Of course, with the election looming in February, one should never assume that this is a functioning democracy. It could be worse but not by much. When you're only ahead of North Korea and Somalia in a study, and it doesn't even matter what it's a study of, that's not good news. In fact, I mentioned the coming election in February to two local engineers today and their reaction was surprise. Neither one knew there was an election in two months. That should tell you about how well democracy here functions.

the chosen one(s)

2011-11-30T13:00:00.000+05:00

No fewer than four of the major candidates for the Republican presidential nomination have declared that "God" told them to run. Perhaps we can quibble about what makes a "major" candidate, but Perry, Cain, Bachman, and Santorum have all made this pronouncement. Ok, Santorum is arguably more of an internet search term than a viable candidate, but he was a U.S. Senator. In a way, none of them are viable candidates. Bachman is Palin 2.0 and really only in it to sell her recently written memoir. Cain only attracted the spotlight with a tax plan reminiscent of a pizza deal and is now melting under that very same light with allegations of infidelity. And Perry, well, Perry doesn't need help imploding as he did that on his own during a recent debate. That these four are (or were?) even major candidates is deeply pathetic.

Well Republicans, I hope you really like Romney since your only semi-moderate hopefuls of Johnson and Huntsman are not gaining traction with the "base" voters.

Back to our divinely chosen candidates. Of course, if asked if they will win, none of them would ever declare that God told them they would win. Instead, they will bring out the standard trope of saying god told them to run, but not because they would win, but as a test of their faith. Perhaps there will be elaboration about God's will being beyond our mortal understanding. Regardless of how elaborate the explanation is, as an atheist, this smacks of serious mental health problems. If someone declared that the great Flying Spaghetti Monster in the sky had told them to do something, whether it was run for President or leave the noodles al dente, they would be called delusional for hearing imaginary voices in their head. But when someone invokes God, in this case a Christian God, it's a testament to their deep faith. This is why people need to see the world. Then they would understand (in my dreams) that their particular religion is more a consequence of geography than deep theological reasoning. Of course, people of faith, upon seeing other faiths up close and personal, typically double-down and reaffirm their faith since that's what it means to have faith, a belief in something that cannot be proven or meaningfully supported.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: buffer zone

2011-11-29T13:56:00.000+05:00

In a broad geopolitical sense, Turkmenistan is a buffer zone of sorts. It lacks the resources and access for significant global influence. Instead, it occupies the southern end of the former Soviet Union, nestled next to everyone's good friends Iran and Afghanistan. I recommend a couple long, but generally very good reads from Stratfor. The first is from a couple years ago on The Geopolitics of Russia which is available without e-mail registration through the magic of Google cache. The second is part of that same series from earlier this year on The Geopolitics of the United States, Part 2 which can also be found through Google cache here. The relevant portion (for today) is the section near the end on Russia and how it can be a threat to United States' interests.

In the eyes of some Russians, the portions of Central Asia that used to be part of the Soviet Union (Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan) are like wayward children. Sure, they may not be under direct control of the Kremlin, they're still here for the taking. This is a condition that these -Stans generally dislike which is why various attempts are made to escape the influence of Moscow. What I wrote about several weeks ago on the diminsihing availability of Russian language teaching is an example of the desire to separate from Russian influence.

For the United States, Turkmenistan along with the rest of Central Asia is a good buffer against Russian influence further south. The United States already uses Turkmenistan air space for flights on the way to Afghanistan. American regional interest is pretty clear: War on Terror (whatever that means) and some level of strength projection. Like the Cold War when the U.S. had military bases in many places along the Soviet perimeter, the U.S. currently maintains bases in the region at Manas, Kyrgyzstan and Karshi, Uzbekistan.

Turkmenistan, like its Central Asian brethren, ends up in the middle of continuing struggle for influence in the region. Day-to-day lives go on and Turkmenistan has an opportunity to have a great deal of say in how it progresses from here. However, it is ultimately boxed in by the geopolitical reality surrounding its position. The struggle has often in the past been between the United States and Russia, but there are now China and India to also accommodate.

thanksgiving

2011-11-24T22:04:00.001+05:00

Whelp. Another great thanksgiving abroad. Regular work day. Delicious non-turkey based dinner. Reasonably interesting dinner conversation.

Also, based on recent events, I'm glad I finally got that "statistical in nature" entry done last week. Good to hear everyone is doing well. Let the crazy uncle-ing begin.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: sponsored by marlboro?

2011-11-22T13:30:00.000+05:00

Within the camp portion of the base here, there is a recreation room. In the rec room, there is a bar area separated from the rest with some couches, TV, chairs, and of course a bar. Well, perhaps not "of course" as the concept of a bar is perhaps a bit peculiar, but there are beverages of an adult nature available along with what could generously be described as a commissary with basics like shampoo, toothpaste, etc that one would probably use while here.

What has always most amused me about the bar is that there is some manner of Marlboro paraphernalia on all four walls. Yes, Marlboro like the tobacco company, whose cigarettes currently cost about $12/pack here due to some custom clearance issues. Well, three wells, and something hanging from the ceiling near the fourth wall. Two posters on opposite sides, a clock, and an illuminated sign that looks a bit like this one. No one here can tell me why these advertisements are on the walls, where they came from, or just who thought it would be a good idea to put them up. They just exist as if they had been there all along.

should vs. is

2011-11-21T14:08:00.000+05:00

We don't live in a world as it should be. We live in a world as it is.

birthright

2011-11-20T12:30:00.000+05:00

Following up on what I wrote about a couple days ago on life being statistical in nature, one of the implications is the shear importance of your starting conditions. In other words (or a singular word), birthright. What, who, where we are born into is arguably the single biggest determiner for where we will live, the education we will receive, what we will do, and ultimately the direction our lives will go. Take note that I said "single-biggest" and not "singular" or "only" as many factors influence our lives, but our starting conditions, this birthright we all receive (for better or worse), influences every part of our subsequent lives. Yes, you have free will in a philosophical sense (or at least I believe we do and our social systems are built on that premise) and can make choices as we see fit, but there is an inescapable influence our past has on our lives. The notion that we are all created equal as stated in the Declaration of Independence, while a nice ideal, is patently ridiculous. In a legal sense, yes, such equality is theoretical achievable but even then there will always be some who are more equal than others (and there is of course the rest of the world to consider). But in a realistic sense, people are obviously born into different situations, whether it be about money, health, or location. Obviously, our respective birthrights do not need to dictate the exact course of our lives. During our life journeys, it is possible to both rise above (and fall below) the achievements of most others who start with similar circumstances. However, the starting condition of that journey strongly influences the likelihood of how high or low you go. This notion deeply undercuts the idea of a "self-made man" and the individualistic nature of achievement to which many people subscribe. Yes, achievement is possible, but in many ways, it is also probable.

kindle, soon

2011-11-17T13:26:00.000+05:00

I’m really interested in Amazon’s new Kindle Fire. This is why I will probably get a Kindle e-reader instead. Nothing against the Fire, but like any first generation product, it seems to need a few refinements that would go a long way to improving the product. I am not sure when the second generation Fire will be released, possibly as late as this time next year, but I’m fine with that sort of timeline. After all, this doesn’t even come close to falling into the “need” category. That additional time will give Amazon time to fill in the app store (which is a generic term despite what Apple’s patent troll lawyers would have you believe), improve battery life, optimize the interface and performance, and either add an external memory card slot (unlikely) or increase the internal memory (more likely). As a user who would be away from meaningful bandwidth for long periods of time, I want the ability to load up a lot of content to consume at a later time. Also, they should even out the wider bezel on the fourth side which would drive me crazy. From the reviews I’ve seen, the Fire does most things ‘OK’, but not so incredibly well that it dominates the competition. Of course, at a $200 price point, there will be design compromises.

Instead of the Fire, a regular Kindle e-reader will be the first step in achieving two simple things. First, reading more. As a portable e-book, a Kindle will travel well and be far lighter and easier than lugging around actual books when I travel. I have one book here with me. It’s a long, dense tome that I can finish by the end of this rotation. Once I am done, I will bring it back Stateside and probably never bring another book here. Everything will go electronic after that. Second, it’s a step into Amazon’s world. A trial run in some ways before getting a Kindle Fire or Amazon Prime or generally giving Amazon the benefit of the full halo effect from my consumer purchases. This is where Apple failed me. While my brother went from iPod to MacBook to Time Capsule to MacBook Pro to iPad to iPhone, I went the other direction. I went from iPod to MacBook to screw this. I went back to Windows with my last laptop purchase and it suits my needs much better than the Apple-verse ever could. Are my Windows PC, Zune media player, and Android phone fragmented? Of course, but there are distinct advantages to that. Even with a possible entry into Amazon's deep realm of offerings, I will still maintain my silos.

At this point, the only real decision I am mulling is which Kindle e-reader to get. The third generation that has been re-branded as Kindle Keyboard? The low-cost, Wi-Fi only Kindle fourth generation? The new Kindle Touch with 3G? The price point is thankfully esoteric. The question is one of interface and usefulness for me. Amazon, soon.

the undercurrent

2011-11-17T13:10:00.001+05:00

There was an undercurrent to my last post which was stated indirectly, but is important to understanding (and accepting!) that life is statistical in nature. The undercurrent is that there is no God. Within the context of the life is statistical concept, the belief in some guiding and influential higher power is inherently incompatible with the idea that life is statistical in nature. To believe in God is to believe that there is directed purpose for everything or at least some things. People can certainly take that position if they would like, but it will be one I cannot join them in. And depending on the level of fervor, it may be one I will work against them for holding.

statistical in nature

2011-11-16T13:18:00.000+05:00

Life is statistical in nature. I like to say it a lot. In fact, I would say it more than I already do, but it's hard to find appropriate non-Vegas times to say it without sounding a bit callous since it does seem a bit impersonal. What's interesting is that the phrase has only appeared in this blog twice before. The first time was several years ago to reference a tragic and freak accident that made the local news while I was working in Farmington. The second was last year while discussing the Deepwater Horizon and how risk is inherent in that type of activity.

There is no particularly new tragedy that is on my mind that prompts this. I made a note to post on this more than two months ago and have finally gotten around to unfurling it into something comprehensible. In fact, I have been desperate to get this done in the past couple weeks because there is a certain deadline I am trying to be ahead of. But as I pour over my notes and half-written sentences, I realize that there is a "got it" sense to this concept and I will struggle mightily to convey just how significant I think it is and why I believe in it. Anecdotal examples can be pushed, but that's not really the point as I would much rather you the reader leave with a deeper acknowledgment of this concept. I will still use one personal example, though I should better call it a familial example.

Life is statistical in nature. This is a difficult concept for most people to understand, let alone accept as part of their lives. As individuals, we do not have the luxury of being aware of what the statistically averaged-out experience of 7 billion people is like. We only have our own experiences, when we often mistakenly assume are “normal” or “average” but there is essentially no chance of that being correct. (Another problem that I’m not going to discuss is that human memory is astonishingly inaccurate.) Thus, we assign an excessive amount of weight to our own experiences and the result is that are concept of the big picture is almost always way too small, self-centered, and invariably does not understand how causation really works. This leads inexorably large numbers of people to turn to other sources for answers like religion or karma or luck or massive government conspiracies. Wrong. All wrong and all terrible as they lead people to reach false conclusions about cause and effect and how the universe, specifically this small planet, actually works.

One way in which life being statistical in nature manifests itself is that, given enough chances, individually low probability events have a high chance of occurring. The lottery is a great example that hopefully makes this idea easily accessible. A person (not you, as I want you to externalize this) buys a lottery ticket. That person's chances of winning the lottery are very low. But another person, let's say person2, also buys a lottery ticket. And then person3 through personN all buy tickets. The chances that any of them pick the winning numbers is very low. (For example, the California state lottery uses a system where 5 numbers out of 47 are chosen and then another number from a separate 27 is picked. The odds of getting all six numbers right on any given ticket is about 1 in 41 million. And yes, I had to look up the current format of the lottery since I do not play. And if you don’t trust me or your own calculations on the odds, then you can also find them here.) While each individual number combination has a low probability of winning, if enough tickets are purchased, then the odds that a winning ticket exists goes up. Eventually, someone (but not you) gets selected as the winner. In a sense, someone has to win eventually (though in theory, there also exists the low probability event of no one ever winning), but the chance of that someone being you is incredibly small.

A more familial example is that my brother and his wife are having a baby soon. In terms of health and prenatal care and following all the best practices that modern medicine has to offer us, they are doing an excellent job. They are from a low risk factor group, unlikely to pass on any genetic diseases, and are properly investing in the health of their child. I'm not here to create needless worry for my brother and sister-in-law. In fact, quite the opposite. You can do what you can do. Everything else is beyond your meaningful control. The statistical die is cast where it is. The child's genetics are already fixed. Worry does not help. In fact, since worry and stress can lead to physiological symptoms, then worry and stress can hurt. But the point is that things are what they are and you did what you were supposed to do. If some low probability negative event still occurs, it's not anyone's fault. These things happen. Perhaps that sounds worrying, potentially terrifying if the concept of things beyond your control is upsetting, but being comforting is not a characteristic I am typically associated with. However, they should take comfort knowing they are doing the "right" things, where “right” is defined as actions that statistically improve the odds of a healthy baby. For what it’s worth, this also includes a positive outlook as we are social creatures and the impact on our physical well being is meaningful. So have some positivism.

Life is statistical in nature and this concept shows up very clearly when it comes to medicine and health. In that sense, our lives are very statistical in nature. Our genetics are a semi-random mix of half of the DNA from each of our parents plus some handful of mutations. Many mutations are harmful and never lead to viable life, some are benign and exist within the regions of seemingly unused DNA, and fewer still have an effect, either positive or negative, that is not immediately fatal. Don’t worry, if you’re able to read this, your genes are more or less fine. However, the genetic lot you drew was entirely out of your control. You can engage in all the right activities, exercise, diet, and lifestyle choices but if you have a genetic predisposition towards high cholesterol or lung cancer or some other condition, then that predisposition increases the chance you will develop said condition. It’s not a guarantee that you will end up with said condition, but things are what they are. Conversely, some people can engage in all sorts of risk factors but still never develop whatever condition X happens to be. You live your life once, not some statistically averaged existence. This is why the citation of your uncle who smoked until he was 90 is irrelevant to me. Unless you are my brother and your uncle is also my uncle, and this uncle is biologically related to us, then his ability to smoke until he was 90 tells me nothing of value since I don't share any of his seemingly very robust genes nor his impervious lungs. Perhaps in 9 out of 10 parallel universes, that same uncle does develop lung cancer, but we don’t get to know that. We’re only here and we don’t get to play the ‘what if’ game with peoples’ lives.

As I mentioned earlier, this statistical spread to our lives might be terrifying to some. It certainly creates some potentially unsettling questions about the arbitrariness of the universe. Good things happen, bad things happen, whatever. Without weighing too much on what is good and bad, some things are irreversibly good or bad including death, but we should never let this paralyze us from action and restrict the choices we are willing to make. Play your cards, roll the dice, or whatever gambling metaphor of your choice and live life.

Edit: Following up on yesterday's post, I already feel much better now that this long-awaited post is out the door. Writing, regardless of quality, is very beneficial to my mental well being.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: something amiss

2011-11-15T14:59:00.000+05:00

Something is off with me and I mean other than the low-quality posts. There's definitely a pipeline of ideas waiting to be cleaned up, but the last week since I have been back, something is not quite right with me. Perhaps I have not adjusted to the time zone as well as I thought, but I have been going to bed early and getting full night's sleep and still feeling fatigued. The first few nights had the standard issue of waking up in the middle of the night, but I always got back to sleep quickly. Eight and nine hours of sleep each of the last few nights and I feel off. My energy is distinctly lower.

Everything here is more or less the same. The work factors are more or less the same. Same people, same sort of work going on, same problems, same successes, same interactions. The environmental factors are mostly the same. Same room, same food, same place. The only major difference is the weather and of course how much daylight there is. It does sort of suck to wake up and see that it is still dark outside, but other than last year in Gabon, that's how every winter of my life has worked. I'm only slightly further north than back home. And it is of course cold, but not materially colder than Hungary, or at least not yet. Everything just has a certain funk at the moment and that's a bit troubling since I just got back from days off. I should be fresh and energized, but instead I feel like I've been here for too long.

Starting yesterday, I've been mixing up my morning and evening routines (or what passes for them). If I still feel the same way in a week, I'll make some more changes until I can get back on track.

miles & more: no more

2011-11-14T14:50:00.000+05:00

Warning: customer service rant incoming. Here's to Lufthansa's Miles & More frequent flier program being run by the most intransigent policies I have ever seen. Lufthansa has good planes and good service for the most part, but their Miles & More program is unyielding and generally run by total tossers. Additionally, their method of customer feedback, where you can only submit items through their web-based form (and not through e-mail at all) is conducive to them ignoring your request or answering a different query than the one you submitted. The result is that I copy all my messages to them into my own e-mail which I send to myself. Otherwise, I have no record of what query I actually submitted, because while they will send a confirmation e-mail each time you submit something, the confirmation e-mail does not contain a copy of your message. That's very basic customer service and they cannot even get it right. Frankly, it was bad enough that I felt compelled to mention it to them in my last message where I informed them i was leaving their program because they were unable to accommodate a very basic request.

The end result is I will passive-aggressively protest by no longer leaving my seat nice and neat when I fly with them. I am generally very conscientious about not leaving a big mess when I travel. I clean up my trash, I fold my blanket, I don't use the headphones, etc. Now, as I cannot really protest via my choice of airline (since work buys those tickets), I will protest in other ways. I used to like you Lufthansa, but then you turned into a jerk.

13 hours

2011-11-11T12:10:00.000+05:00

With the end of daylight saving time in the U.S. (and Europe), I am now another hour ahead of where most of you are. It is now a 13 hour time difference back to the good part of the United States. It's like living in the future, but slower.

ukraine - where the hits come from

2011-11-10T13:00:00.000+05:00

When Google redesigned the Blogger options and I changed my layout, they also gave us more access to information about the blog. In particular, I can see how many visitors come from which referring sites or what browser they use or which posts are most visited or what country the IP address is from. That last one is kind of strange since in the last week, after the United States (which is in the lead by a wide margin), the second most common country of origin is Ukraine (and not 'the Ukraine').

I am not sure how IP origin's are determined, especially since some people deliberately obfuscate their location. Also, some people like me when I'm at work bounce through a satellite and end up appearing as somewhere other than our actual location. Usually, but not always, if I try to go to Google, I get redirected to Google's Russian portal. This is probably why Russia ends up fourth in terms of IP origin for the past week. Either way, I am amused and slightly confused by where this Ukrainian traffic is coming from. Based on some of the referring sites, it could be weird link spam that occurs as bots trawl the internet and latch on to key words and whatever else they are looking for. Something similar happened a few weeks ago with Latvia where I received several visits from there in a short period of time.

It's all rather immaterial, but I do recommend that whoever is using Internet Explorer upgrade to Firefox or Google Chrome. And I want to know where those 12 hits from Netscape came from.

public holidays in turkmenistan

2011-11-09T11:10:00.000+05:00

In response to a comment from yesterday's post, here is a list of public holidays in Turkmenistan. To compare and contrast, here are the public federal holidays in the United States and even that list is a sham since the only paid holidays in many non-government workplaces are Thanksgiving and the day after, Christmas Eve and Christmas, New Year's Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, and Independence Day.

The holiday that is going on right now in Turkmenistan (and most of the Muslim world) is Eid al-Adha which commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael, but was given a sheep to sacrifice instead because God likes to psychologically terrorize its followers. In terms of significance to Muslims, this ranks right up there with Eid ul-Fitr which is to celebrate the end of Ramadan. If it can be said that Christians have Christmas and Easter as their two most significant holidays, then for Muslims Eid al-Adha and Eid ul-Fitr are arguably their two most significant holidays.

In terms of pay and public versus private sector employees, if the government declares a holiday then it is an official holiday and the same rules apply to all locals. This means if you do need to work that day, then pay is doubled. For government employees, I am not sure, but I assume most government offices are closed and only essential government functions are working on holidays (like the police).

tuesdays in turkmenistan: where snowmen are universal

2011-11-08T20:47:00.001+05:00

Ok, now winter has really arrived to Turkmenistan. It was snowing for most of the day yesterday in Ashgabat. They ended up with a couple inches of accumulation in the fields, but the streets were too warm and heavily traveled for any build up on them. Out here in Balkanabat, no snow yet, but the temperature is under 5 degC and looks to dip below freezing at night very soon. Fantastic!

I foolishly did not take any pictures, but the building of snowmen, even when cobbled together from just a couple inches that has fallen, evidently goes far beyond some classic picture of Americana winters. I saw several being put together by children yesterday (who were not in school because yesterday, today, and tomorrow are all holidays) as the snow fell.

cheating with posts again

2011-11-03T15:32:00.000+05:00

Yep, I've cheated with posts again. Entries for the last three days have been retroactively posted.

paternoster?

2011-11-02T12:57:00.000+05:00

Let's start with a warning sticker. It's quite odd since a normal elevator has doors that would close so why would the bin get caught like that. The answer is the paternoster lift and now I finally know the proper name of the elevator of terror in the MOL office in Budapest that I had occasion to ride in a couple of times. Look, they even list that MOL building as a location that still uses the paternoster. I can confirm that they do indeed have such lifts as I rode in one the handful of times I had to go to the MOL office in Budapest. (Mostly, we went to the MOL office in Algyo, which was just outside Szeged.) The ones in the MOL office were for only one person at a time in each space, which is good since it reduces the likelihood someone will try to use the lift to commit murder most foul. You remember those warnings as a child to keep your hands inside the car? Well, take them very seriously when you ride one of those. Modern American litigation would have a field day with these babies even with one of the best .gif animations ever.

tuesdays not in turkmenistan: daylight savings

2011-11-01T12:30:00.000+05:00

As I am not in Turkmenistan, this seems like an opportune time for this non-Turkmen story. Also, since it's my blog, I can pretty much do whatever I want. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has decided to cancel the end of daylight saving time in Russia which was supposed to take place this past Sunday in Russia. While you may have read about this today or possibly yesterday, thanks to work, I received news of this bit of awesomeness last week since those precious conference calls are oh so important to dial into on time.

What makes this cancellation interesting is that Medvedev has not cancelled daylight saving time, but that his action actually extends DST to be year round. What some people may not realize since standard DST in the U.S. occupies almost 8 months out of the year is that the summer months (plus several more) are actually the shifted months. Standard time is what happens from November to March, while the nearly 8 months in the middle of the year are actually what we have finagled into changing for various reasons. Thus, in essence, Medvedev has permanently shifted Russian time zones by an hour.

This reveals how arbitrarily that time can be treated. This is perhaps why many military actions, especially those that are internationally coordinated, reference Zulu time to avoid confusion. And while this is not a launching point for a discussion of relativity and faster than light neutrinos (which are most likely the byproduct of an improper setup delay), it is a launching point for a trip through memory lane. Specifically, to high school freshman year English class, World Literature and the illustrious One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich which is what I immediately thought of when I first saw the work e-mail announcing this change. For some reason, one of the few details of that novel that has stayed with me for the past 15 years is this exchange between our protagonist Ivan Denisovich and another prisoner:
“Since then it’s been decreed that the sun is highest at one o’clock.”
“Who decreed that?”
“The Soviet government.”

The quote makes it seem so suitable for Russia to cancel the end of day light saving time. Of course, nine different time zones currently span Russia so it's not exactly a one size fits all kind of place. Officially, the change, or lack thereof, was made to help the people of Russia who apparently see a spike in the number of heart attacks and suicides when the clocks are changed. However, without proper preparation, many electronic devices that either cannot be updated or did not receive a software patch in time fell back an hour like they had been designed. One must wonder how many people ended up an hour late for something the next day and how many heart attacks that caused.

titles

2011-10-31T10:43:00.000+05:00

Weathering changes. That was the title of a post from a few weeks ago. I thought it was witty and clever with it's double meaning about dealing with changes at work and the difference with the weather, but really it was quite silly. What I want to believe is brimming with hidden meaning is in fact staid and predictable, and inevitably what the post is actually about. After all, this is not a J. Peterman catalog.

However, this makes me think about the occasionally ridiculous titles that some people have. Things like the Minister of the Undersecretary to the Viceroy of Exellence of Oil & Gas Institute blah blah blah. Ok, that one might have been made up, but there is certainly a lot of pomp and circumstance in the titles that some people have. At work, we have pretty bland titles. Things like Operations Manager or Field Engineer or my own District Technical Engineer, which I downplay and just say I am an engineer. I strongly dislike pompous sounding titles that are only there to, well, sound pompous. Either you are important or you are not. Extra syllables in your title should not make you more legitimate though they often do so perhaps it's a bit of fake it till you make it going on. Hopefully, it's not just fake it all the time.

The perpetual title piling on is what leads to an abundance of Producer credits in Hollywood. As readers might know, I am a fan of The Simpsons and have watched it for many, many years. I also own the DVDs (legitimately!) and actually listen to the commentary audio tracks on the episodes. On the commentary track of one episode, specifically season 13, episode 7, "Brawl in the Family", the guest star fro the episode, the very underrated Delroy LIndo asked about the proliferation of Producer credits during the opening. Evidently, due to some union/guild restrictions on pay and other titles, especially writer credits, producer credits are doled out instead in lieu of pay and to stroke egos. Amusingly enough, that episode also has a line that should amuse Cal fans:
The Simpson family sits in their jail cell. Lisa reads the paper, which has made their arrest front-page news.
Lisa: Thanks a lot, everybody. Now, I'll never get into an Ivy League school.
Bart: [taunting] You're going to Stanford, you're going to Stanford ...
Homer + Bart: You're going to Stanford!
Lisa: Take it back! Take it back!
Homer: Stanford.
Marge: This family has hit rock bottom.

tuesdays not in turkmenistan: bling

2011-10-26T04:34:00.000+05:00

While I may not be in Turkmenistan, it doesn't mean I cannot keep up my weekly series.

Our benevolent leader has been bestowed with the great Hero of Turkmenistan award. While he did not technically grant the award to himself, the U.S. is also not technically at war in either Afghanistan or Iraq. (Ok, it's a matter of semantics as the U.S. is engaged in "military engagements" with the illustrious titles of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation New Dawn.) Regardless, I am sure the medal pairs well with with formal and casual wear.

This week also marks the twentieth anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union and the Hero medal ceremony was undoubtedly part of the run-up of festivities. The official day is Thursday, which is of course a holiday along with Friday and even tomorrow's work day is supposed to end an hour early. In the end, it really creates a 4-day weekend where getting any actual work done in the field is incredibly difficult. It's not impossible, just more difficult finding sober employees.

back in the Bay Area

2011-10-24T15:40:00.000+05:00

This time, I will only be back for two weeks total so I'm flying out again in a couple Saturdays. This time will be spent doing, well, stuff. I have a surprisingly large amount of stuff to take care of while I'm back and much of it is rather open-ended so it's hard to say if something is complete, passable, or just sort of whatever. In fact, this is part of what I need to do, but I'm not very well focused. My first night back was halfway normal regarding sleep and time zones, but last night I actually regressed with an overly long nap and if I'm not careful, every night will be like that. Anyway, about nine different tasks to take care of so this is a start for one of them.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: the grind

2011-10-18T12:30:00.000+05:00

This ended up being incredibly apt. About 4 weeks ago, I picked this as the topic for this week. It was to be my last week here before days off (and it is!) and I had a sinking suspicion that the grind would have me pretty gassed by now. Past me was right. I am very tired. Being here is tiring. It is tiring from the first week back and by now, near the end of a rotation, it's this deep weariness that has set in. And it shows in more than just absurdly bad blogging for the past few weeks. I can tell when I'm not working effectively. It's the difficulty focusing on the task at hand, prioritizing what must be done first, being an effective listener of your employees, etc.

The grind is what happens at work. The omnipresent 24/7 nature of the business makes it difficult to unplug. This is one of the things I like about rotating, even though I know full well, I'll work a significant amount of my time home, it will still be a good change of pace and give me quiet, focused time. The constant interruptions in the office for approval, review, advice, signature, etc are the grind for me. And so many e-mails. Some of it is about better delegation, but some of it is a pure resources issue. A certain amount of work and a certain number of people available. The inexorable march of numbers is what it is.

Anyway, this rotation started well, lots of good work accomplished and lots of good entries. Both have tailed off, but I'll be back in the Bay Area soon enough, getting reinvigorated, and ready to complete so many half-started projects.

tuesday in turkmenistan: personality cults

2011-10-11T13:32:00.000+05:00

Coming off the heels of a very busy past 10 days and now on the verge of a 3-4 hour conference call this afternoon on the state of the business in Turkmenistan, this is going to be a relatively poor showing for my weekly theme post. This was actually going to be my topic last week, but the President visited town yesterday and I wanted to see if anything from that visit would provide fodder for more material. However, nothing much occurred other than a half day of work lost for local staff since roads were closed in the morning.

The previous President of Turkmenistan Saparmurat Niyazov led the country prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, through independence and up until 2007 when he passed away. He erected things like the Neutraility Arch which was topped with a rotating gold-plated statue of himself. That should provide some indication on where he may have been on the humility scale. Hint: think Kim Jong-Il more than Mr. Rogers. He also authored a book called "Ruhnama" (Book of the Soul) which has been a staple of Turkmen schooling for the last 10 years. One expat colleague said he found an English version on an offshore rig and tried to read it, but called it "unreadable". This year, the current president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow removed the Ruhnama from mandatory school coursework. Admittedly, this new gap in the curriculum was quickly filled by some of the current president's writings instead. He is also working on a tome of his own which will soon be released. While no title is announced, evidently the leading contenders are "Turkmennama" (Book for Turkmen) and "Adamnama" (Book for Humanity).

What Niyazov clearly engaged in was the development of a "cult of personality" around his leadership, position, and tight exertion of control of what people could access. Will Berdimuhamedow do the same thing? It's less clear, but the way in which the next election is conducted should be very revealing. His presidency started with some reforms, but progress may have stalled and the feeling on the ground is less optimistic. Various deleterious rule changes that impact work are being seen, diplomatic relations are less than stellar, and his replacement of Niyazov's Ruhnama with his own works is, well, it's pretty clear what that portends.

weathering changes

2011-10-07T10:02:00.000+05:00

The weather here is finally starting to turn. I actually wore a jacket for the first time during my difficult two-minute commute from my room to my office in the morning. The AC is no longer being used in my room and I am this close to turning on the room heater, mostly to help getting out of my warm bed more palatable. In the office, there is no heater, so presumably the warmth generated by the labor of industrious trainees will keep me warm in the coming months. During my next rotation, the weather will have undoubtedly cooled some more. I'd like to pretend this is some great struggle but the only difficulty is deciding which jacket I plan to wear on the plane the next time I come and if I will bring my big coat in my suitcase.

I am mostly posting to mark time and hold the line as I really do not want to lose the momentum I had in the last few weeks. It's been a good run and there's a lot more going on inside my enfeebled mind, but there is another change we are weathering here. Or maybe I am the one weathering this change. As seems to be our inevitable lot here, we are limping through the month short-handed after the departure of an engineer. We will see what can be done, but it may delay my next return home as that departure in combination with someone else at training and another person on vacation makes work much more, um, dynamic?

tuesdays in turkmenistan: russian influence

2011-10-04T13:21:00.000+05:00

Once again, I am dipping into EurasiaNet for some inspiration. This time, it is about the decreasing importance of Russian in Turkmenistan. During the time of the Soviet Union, Russian was introduced to the other nations as an obvious common language to help with unification and also colonization. Many 'ethnic' Russians (and I use quotes since that is such a loose term) moved to other member republics like Turkmenistan and it was not so long ago that the country was nearly one-third Russian. The dissolution of the Soviet Union has led many of those Russians to leave and with them, the strength and influence of their language. The trend is further accelerated, at least here in Turkmenistan, by a push to bring back and reclaim Turkmen cultural heritage and especially the Turkmen language. It is of no small significance that former President Saparmurat Niyazov switched the alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin shortly after Turkmenistan gained independence in 1991.

Schools are increasingly taught in only Turkmen and Russian schools are increasingly less common. While all the home country engineers here studied Russian when they were in school, they have told me that now it is more likely that children do not learn any Russian in schools. One colleague told me that anyone who is proper Turkmen will be going to Turkmen schools now. He did not say say "proper" as that is my paraphrasing of his intent to describe those who are culturally and ethnically Turkmen as opposed to those who live within the borders but are of Russian, Uzbek, or Kazakh descent. It should be noted that the definition of who is proper Turkmen is at least not terribly restrictive, but it still exists. It's certainly not a "no true Scotsman" scenario and includes people who at least I did not think were Turkmen at first glance. There are different types of Turkmen and my colleague mentioned some differences in particular between the capital of Ashgabat and another large city, Mary, and the region around it.

I made a remark to that colleague about everyone who I have met who works for the state company is ethnic Turkmen. He said that it is perhaps a somewhat defensive measure on the part of the state company, but when he was interviewing several years ago for a job, the situation was very different, at least at the other oil and gas operators and even here at work. Our other clients were much more Russian-dominated, with a much larger percentage of employees being Russian even just five or six years ago. Even in this office, it was evidently a much stronger Russian presence, though I can think of a few practical reasons why that would be the case. (Briefly, Russia has a much older and more mature, and thus more experienced industry. This base was still relatively young six years ago and needed people who knew the language and who had experience, hence many Russians.) Now, almost all new engineers are home country and almost all of those are Turkmen, within the somewhat broad range that encompasses.

While the reclamation of their culture, heritage, and language are important, the phase-out of Russian may have unintended consequences. For example, many documents are still in Russian. Our contracts are in Russian and English, not Turkmen and English. Give this process another twenty years of independence and will there be a generation in positions of influence who do not know Russian and are unable to easily access that relatively recent historical past. Additionally, and this is a challenge faced by all relatively small nations, learning Turkmen is important in Turkmenistan, but of very little practical use elsewhere. This is like my experience in Hungary. The value in learning the local language when it has almost zero application once you leave is greatly diminished. (Plus, I am terrible with languages.) At work, the de facto second language is Russian over Turkmen. In fact, plenty of the engineers who are around my age say that while they can speak Turkmen, they are not very strong with it and would have trouble writing. It was a problem when we interviewed a local person for an equipment operator position and he knew Turkmen, but barely any Russian since Russian is what all the locals speak amongst themselves since they are a slightly older set (mid-20's-40's mostly). It's not that the country should not promote Turkmen language, but it should also keep using Russian. Dropping Russian will make the country and the people less accessible to non Turkmens and also make it much harder for Turkmens to go outside the country. Maybe that's the point.

still in service

2011-10-02T14:43:00.000+05:00

While there is perhaps not a relevant xkcd for everything, their random button took me to their strip on graphing calculator prices. Yes, they still cost $100-150, but just how many do you plan on buying? Fifteen years later and my TI-85 is still in service which should make it the longest-serving electronic device I own.

A-10 Thunderbolt II - aka: Warthog

2011-10-01T16:30:00.000+05:00

I'm never quite sure where my link clicking will take me, but the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II, often called by its nickname "Warthog" is always interesting to read about. While I understand the principle's of flight well enough, there is a certain peculiarity about seeing something that looks like this fly so capably. Tactically speaking, it was made for close air support, but from an engineering perspective, the entire plane is built to carry a really big Gatling gun. How big? This big. Aside from the almost absurdly large Gatling gun, the A-10 can carry a few other armaments as well. Not scheduled for replacement until at least 2028, the A-10 will make it to 50+ years of service before slowly flying off into the sunset.

paradox of tolerance

2011-09-29T11:59:00.000+05:00

The paradox of tolerance posits that a tolerant person might be against intolerance, so by definition they would be intolerant of intolerance. However, this means they are not truly tolerant if they would not accept intolerant members. However, what is the alternative? Karl Popper has summed it up nicely:

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society... then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them... We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”

The most ruthless and sycophantic will lead unless we shut them out early on.

zero hour airplane!

2011-09-28T13:00:00.000+05:00

Part of me wants to believe that everyone in a certain age range has seen comedy classic Airplane!. Despite coming out before I was born, it no doubt aired on many lazy Saturdays and Sundays on the old KBHK channel 44 in the Bay Area. Or perhaps my first viewing came from the illustrious VHS selection available at the local library. Either way, Airplane! is comedy gold and totally appropriate for in-flight viewing (and certainly much better than Thor, which was 2 wasted hours of time on my last flight). What is less well known about Airplane! is that much of it, including entire scenes copied nearly word for word, is lifted from the much lesser known film Zero Hour, which is a serious dramatic film with the same storyline. Airplane! has a storyline? Yes it does even if all you remember is the protagonist's drinking problem, his co-pilot turning to jelly, a jive-talking nun, and to not call anyone Shirley. It's plot centers around a plane full of passengers and crew members who get sick after eating the fish and the subsequent need to land said plane without the pilots.

What I find fascinating is why anyone would think fish served as the main course on a flight would be even slightly palatable. In fact, I am not sure of the last time I even saw fish offered as a main course on a flight. Air France often had some bits of salmon in a salad dish, but they offered the usual options of chicken something and other meat something as the main courses (plus special options). Lufthansa goes with the same thing, though it's usually chicken or pasta. United doesn't serve complimentary meals on domestic flights anymore. And Southwest seems to have abandoned peanuts in favor of pretzels due to food allergies. I say 'screw it' and always sprinkle peanut dust around every flight I take. But fish as a main course? No, not a good idea. Perhaps the food scientists have not figured out how to create a fish-based meal that only results in flatulence which is odorless.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: rules?

2011-09-27T13:00:00.000+05:00

As an expatriate, it is always difficult to figure out the rules and laws of a nation. I am an outsider who has managed to get in, but the linguistic and cultural barriers will remain high. I did not grow up within these borders and while I can acknowledge the situation for what it is, my understanding of how it came to be this way will always be lacking. Sometimes, rather often times, I must simply accept that things are the way they are. This has been especially true here where both Soviet-era influences and post-Soviet isolation has led to a difficult-to-parse mix of acceptable norms and cultural expectations. My own attitude about my purpose here undoubtedly adds to this difficulty since I do view myself as someone who is here to work, not to culturally assimilate. Both can happen, but the latter is not a priority.

While I am an outsider, I am hardly the only one who has difficulty understanding the rules here and I do not just mean the other expats. Even locals have a hard time comprehending some of the rules and regulations. I often ask about something and people will just shake their heads, either to express their own lack of certainty or to convey a mild bewilderment as if to say, "Hey, I just live here, I don't make the rules." Some days, the rules and changes to them might actually prompt more than just mere bewilderment. I'm just waiting for someone to take the badges line from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (which also appeared in a film of the same name, then spoofed by Blazing Saddles and spoofed again by UHF) and make it about all the rules and laws.

But things are what they are. When I was in Ashgabat walking around several weeks ago, I was forced into a few detours since the police were closing off streets since the President was going to be driving through. How soon? About an hour apparently. Why not let adoring supporters wave at his motorcade? I'm not sure, though I suppose some value security more than adulation. Regardless, my walk was meant to be rather circuitous so this just made it slightly more so. There's also a curfew and not just for expats, though its enforcement seems to fall into one of those gray zones of resources better applied elsewhere. So how late can I be out and where can I go? I'm not sure anyone can give me a definitive answer, especially one that will be supported by authorities, so erring on the side of caution is what's fashionable at work.

Tenders for work are another source of both mystery and awe. Since royalties collected by the government do not kick in until producers have recovered their drilling costs, it makes sense that the government desires drilling prices to be as low as possible. However, how that desire manifests itself into policy and subsequent state review of tenders is less clear. What is clear is that tides go in and tides go out, but tenders go in and don't always come out. You can't explain that.

Another example is that there is talk of dramatically changing the way explosives (used by one of the business segments) can be imported into the country. It is a change that could potentially centralize all importation to a government entity which would then distribute the products as it sees fit. If implemented, it would introduce many questions about ownership of the product and who pays for it when. Also, these are not commodity products. One cannot simply take charges built for a very specific tool and allocate them to another company. Well, one can, but it won't make the charges work so actual implementation of such a policy could use some clarification. Anyway, there is only talk of this, so perhaps action on it will be different.

risk taking - need more?

2011-09-26T14:00:00.000+05:00

I ended yesterday with the idea that once one can acknowledge and let go of defensiveness, not only is there obvious potential for growth, but also room for risk taking. Risk taking is often linked with growth of many kinds, including personal, professional, and financial. You can stay in your box and be perfectly content, but our lexicon is filled with phrases like "No risk, no reward" and "No guts, no glory" which emphasize the need for taking chances in order to excel. (One could naturally discuss a great deal about bailouts and whatever moral hazard that has/can result when the risk-takers not being the consequence-bearers. However, one merely need to google moral hazard to see plenty o' discussion on the subject.)

Financial risk, at least as far as investing goes, is generally straightforward. More risk should offer the potential for greater gain, but also greater loss. Less risk should mean less potential gain, but fewer potential losses. Many moons ago, I had a CD account that yielded 6.25%, a figure that is nigh impossible to imagine being available now. It was fantastic, but also not going to be available any time soon. If one wants that sort of yield or better, especially in today's financial climate, it almost certainly means more risk. Cash positions and dividend-paying utilities are relatively safe with low risk, but they will also never grow aggressively. More aggressive stocks, small-cap growth, and even trading on volatility all carry much more potential upside to go with their obvious risks. It's not that my money should be doing more, but that I should be doing more with my money. I am young enough to make back losses over time and some risk of losing capital should be acceptable, even welcome if it means greater returns.

In a professional sense, working here is hard to quantify in a risk sense. I suppose being where I am right now carries various risks and many of them are similar as to those that existed when I was in West Africa. However, most of these are risks to personal safety, not really inherent career risks. And as much as it will pain my mother to see me type this, I am not really concerned about my personal safety. There is good reason for this and not mere recklessness and I want to get back around to this idea at the end of the week. In terms of risk to career, staying here is the safe and easy choice. Not here physically, though I did just transfer in, but here as in my employer. I can turn what has so far been a series of similar, but always different jobs, into a coherent career that might even have a bit of direction to it. This is safe and relatively easy (but by no means absolutely easy) and of relatively low risk. It is also fraught with something that will always bother me if I go down that path. The reward of something else and what it could bring (in a purely professional sense) carries the risk of also failing to succeed in that other path. Staying put does not have that risk, but it also never means other rewards.

Personal risk taking could be all of the above, though I mean it in a relationship sense. With one exception, I have entered into every romantic relationship in my life and already known or at least believed, that it was doomed to failure for whatever the reason(s) might be. (It should be noted that this was not necessarily consciously known to me , but I am quite certain that at least some of me knew this each time sans the exception.) Perhaps it was the cynicism of youth, (though I still feel that way about everyone I meet), or I was never properly afflicted with whatever biochemical mix equates to love, or I was simply an immature jerk. Or, more likely, if I could envision an end at the beginning, then it also meant not actually investing real emotion and not being hurt. Regardless of why, that lack of emotional plunge is safe and boring. The single box is comfortable enough, but it is also very small. Finding how deep a box for two can be means the risk of falling through its depths.

defensive

2011-09-25T20:48:00.001+05:00

Yesterday, I framed some of my investing habits as being conservative in nature. Perhaps the word I should have used was defensive. Dividends? Defensive. Cash positions? Incredibly defensive. It's like girding for a sharp decline in equity prices. Or it's the nature of my character.

Sport provides some good examples of this defensive character, especially since there are usually very clear defensive and offensive roles. The last time I was a leading goal scorer on a soccer team I played for was second grade. Since then, I have largely played defense, very rarely in the midfield, and almost never as a forward/striker. It is much more satisfying to me to be that stalwart last line and endlessly stymie opponents during a match. Playing youth basketball, I want to think I was a capable shooter and didn't shy away from offense due to a lack of skills (and I did finish sixth in the Junior Olympic free throw event back in sixth grade!), but I much preferred the defensive end. Rebounding and shot-blocking were more fun or maybe I just enjoyed shattering dreams one blocked shot at a time. This trend existed even while playing video game basketball. My brother and I used to play NBA Jam together and he would shoot and go for inbound steals and I camp under the basket and rebound and take advantage of the game's generous goal-tending policy.

It is much more than just about sports. I used to hate being wrong. It was more than just needing to know all the answers and getting the best score. It was also about the more subjective elements of the world. Which route is fastest, what's the best policy to address social problem XYZ, who will win competition ABC. I could be incredibly defensive, illogically so, even after being shown I was wrong about something. The need for rightness probably fueled much of the defensiveness when I was younger.

As one grows up, life generally becomes increasingly less structured, the decisions made are more open, and there are less clearly obvious right and wrong answers or choices to make. It goes from clear right and wrong to a gradient of good and bad. Even that is terribly gray as the desirability of each outcome is subject to the different interests of all affected parties. In many cases, some decisions are clearly better than others, but that insight often only exists in the clarity of hindsight. And even then, it is sometimes only clear which choice should not have been made, not necessarily which choice should have been made. Not only is it necessary to accept that one (meaning me) can make a decision where there are no good outcomes, but that even when there are, I will still make the wrong choice from time to time. Not wrong in an absolute sense, but the idea that there would have been a generally better outcome that could have been reached. This acceptance has only been possible through the making of many, many mistakes over the years. The acceptance of these mistakes was the first real step in letting go of my inherent defensiveness for it is near impossible to learn and make a better decision the next time if I already think my decision is the best possible one. This is very basic maturation, but tremendously helpful with the next basic step: risk taking.

paper losses

2011-09-24T09:29:00.003+05:00

In the face of an unusually bad week in the stock market, perhaps it is finally time to put together my thoughts on this. I was noodling around with a similar post a month ago after a few straight weeks of poor stock market performance back in August. While I have easy access to news and information, the distance of being overseas, especially so far away makes this seem like such a insignificant issue. I think the 12 hour time difference from back home (or whatever it is), and thus the 9 hour difference with Wall Street makes it even more detached. By the time the markets open, it's dinner time here and checking on early morning market action is hardly at the top of my to-do list at that point in the day. What lessens the seeming impact of the news is undoubtedly the lack of video information and talking (screaming?) heads expounding on the market's performance. Everything seems less urgent when the delivery isn't from an armchair analyst yelling into the camera.

As for significance, it is quite significant despite the dampening of the delivery. On paper, market losses are quite noticeable as I do track these things. However, my investment style, like aspects of my personality, is quite conservative. Yes, stocks are down, but I don't care. Well, I don't worry. Undoubtedly, a big portion of my non-worry is from my non-need for currently held investments to be providing a meaningful source of income. I'm young, work a lot, and spend very little. This means I have time to reap the benefits of compounding interest, have little time to spend money, and will continue to accrue capital. Work has also meant that I have little time to actively manage any investments. This has resulted in two manifestations of my conservatism.

First, a meaningful fraction of what I have is effectively uninvested. I spend so much time with work that I have not taken the time to actually research and weight a lot of potential investment choices. In a practical sense, this really means I should be in mutual funds and diverse portfolios. In times like these, having available cash means available opportunities. If you believe in whatever your underlying investment theses are and that stocks (at least some of them) are under-valued, then this is a great time to use available cash and increase investments.

Second, I like dividends. There is something rather nice about a boring utility that wants to just give you 5% back every year. I'm perfectly fine with Exelon unsexily producing electricity or Waste Management taking out the garbage. Big-time growth? No, not really, but that's not the point. They are dramatically boring and that is a very good thing.

There is something that is arguably a third manifestation of my conservative nature and that is the fact that I track all of this. I have mentioned this before, but I used to track all aspects of my finances with Quicken starting after college up until the time I moved to Hungary. What happened then is that for a personal laptop, I traded in my old Dell Inspiron for a black MacBook. One of the downsides of that switch was that Intuit did not have a good Quicken product for Mac at the time and one could say that they still don't, so I stopped tracking, well, everything. (Yes, I tried Quicken Essentials for Mac and I think it is terrible.) I went from a certain level of compulsion with my finances to not keeping tabs on it anymore. Now, this isn't to say that anything untoward happened to my financial situation during this time. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I was making more, and spending substantially less since working overseas meant certain benefits I did not have Stateside. However, this lack of Quicken bothered me to no end and that along with other factors led me to eventually abandon the MacBook and go back to a Windows laptop earlier this year. I have resumed my obsessive Quicken ways and was able to resume my old data file and even fill in the biggest missing chunks of financial history. There are some kinks to work out, but I'm back on track for my tracking.

The only issue that has kept me from both caring more and being more pro-active is time. However, that is also changing (somewhat) with work rotation so I can get back to research and back to small, risky investments as well. Hey, as much fun as dividends are, some small amount of aggressive investing helps keep my attention and keeps the interest up. Soon, it will be time for some paper gains.

cables - elevators and diplomatic

2011-09-22T20:46:00.000+05:00

There is a regional news site, EurasiaNet that I first heard about from my brother which he knew about from his own time in this general region of the world. I poked around it a few times when I first came here, but haven't paid it much attention recently. That is, until today, when I saw a colleague looking at a story about the President getting stuck in an elevator. Actually, the first thing I noticed was the photo because it was immediately obvious that it was from Ashgabat. There was something about the building and the light fixtures that made me say, "That's Ashgabat!"

Being the information obsessed individual who I am, I poked around the EurasiaNet some more to check out other articles on Turkmenistan. A recent one about leaked diplomatic cables between the U.S. and Turkmenistan was an interesting read. The content was perhaps not entirely shocking, but has reminded me of something I have been giving a lot of thought to recently. There is a sharp disconnect, and it has arguably always existed, between U.S. foreign policy and its stated ideals. However, whether or not you agree with this disconnect, there are many reasons for its existence.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: the golden statue

2011-09-20T14:16:00.000+05:00

I found it! When I arrived back in Turkmenistan two weeks ago, I had a couple nights to spend in Ashgabat before the next flight to Balkanabat. On one evening, I was out with a colleague being shown the city and we came across the golden statue of former President Saparmurat Niyazov. More accurately, we came across a golden statue of the former president as there seems to be more than one of these made. For the record, he's the former president because he passed away naturally, not because of any enhanced electoral techniques.

The statue was outside a government building (of course) and might be the same one that used to sit atop the Neutrality Arch. The Arch has been dismantled and the statue might be the same as the one seen atop the Arch in the Wikipedia photo, but it's hard to tell since the photo is so small. Either way, there seems to have been more than one made anyway so that's not really the point. Unfortunately, the presence of security made taking a picture seem like a good way to get in trouble. There's always a great deal of uncertainty about what one can and cannot do and that is not just an expat concern. (Excellent, now I have a topic for next week!) Regardless, a statue is there for passersby to see. It looked like it could be gold-plated as it is alleged to be, though the coloring looked off in the city lights of the night.

At first, the idea of such a statue seemed a bit self-aggrandizing. However, during my recent visit to D.C., I was reminded that there are monuments to former presidents all over the place in the United States. Some, like the Lincoln Memorial and Jefferson Memorial hold prominent positions in the nation's capital. And of course, then there is Mount Rushmore, hardly a monument to subtlety. What is different is that none of those U.S. monuments were erected when those former Presidents were still alive, let alone when they were in office. In fact, even naming something (typically naval vessels) after a president who is still alive is not very common and a relatively recent trend as it has been done for Carter, Reagan, and Bush (#41). However, a naval vessel is hardly a prominent public monument. Imagine the public consternation (and political finger-wagging) that would occur if a sitting President of the United States erected a monument to himself or herself while still in office.

Back to my first impression. Statues erected in one's own honor are self-aggrandizing and that was probably the point.

the weekly

2011-09-19T12:54:00.000+05:00

I rather like the concept of what I have now dubbed "Tuesdays in Turkmenistan". I was able to keep up with it for my first 8 weeks here back in June/July, and it's going well so far this time around. As for tomorrow's entry, have no fear as it is already written! And to think I could have been doing this in my previous locations with snappy names like "Gabbing in Gabon" and "Contemplations in Congo" and "H-something in Hungary". It is some structure, albeit self-imposed, to keep me honest about blogging.

I have had occasion (and time) to cull through some semi-recent e-mails and read, sort, and reply to them as needed. I go through these phases as noted a year-and-a-half ago when I went through a similar e-mail push. It is something I certainly need to work on and finish. I have made it back to around the time of my brother's wedding two years ago, which means many more e-mails even older than that await sorting. I bring up that time because that's the time I fell off the blogging horse for a month. The archives are deceptive since I back-dated some entries, but I went AWOL on the blog, e-mail, everything for around a month back then and it was simply unacceptable for me to so blatantly ignore contact with everyone. I'm back on the horse and will be much more committed to the blog and e-mails. Rotation and being home in April/May and again in August made it very clear to me that I cannot ignore, squander, and let relationships with people I care about languish while I distract myself with frequent flyer miles.

I'll be pushing out the weekly, well, every week while I am on duty. During days off, it will probably not be so forthcoming, especially since it will not fit my Tuesdays in Turkmenistan title if I am not actually in Turkmenistan. Presumably, I will be seeing some of you in person if I am not here. Otherwise, for you readers who I do not know in real life, well, I can visit you too if I'm ever in your part of the world, wherever that might be.

rental car review: Toyota Camry

2011-09-17T12:52:00.000+05:00

While I was in the greater Washington D.C. area in my last week back Stateside, I rented a Toyota Camry. As I posted on my rental Dodge Caliber last week, it is now the Camry's turn.

I can see why people buy the Camry in droves. It is functional, spacious, has clean and inoffensive styling, and gets decent fuel economy for a large-midsize sedan. However, it is utterly devoid of any character. It is a soulless automobile that could never be an Autobot nor Decepticon. Instead, in 30 years, it will be stacked with its ilk ready to be run over by the Grave Digger. Consider that a compliment because that would be 20 or fewer years for most cars.

Like the Caliber I rented earlier, this Camry felt like a typical base-engine rental model. In this case, the engine was more adequate, since it was probably a 2.4L instead of the Caliber's 2.0L. The exterior styling is bland and nothing says boring like the white paint job my rental possessed. (Not a fault of the Camry, but more Hertz's fault, the car was riddled with scratches along both the front and rear bumpers.) The interior was equally functional. I did wish for a second power port, but some dreams will always go unfulfilled. It had everything you needed in a car, but there was nothing memorable.

That is both what makes the Camry so successful and yet so painfully mundane. It represents many generations of manufacturing refinement, an iterative process that has helped drive quality up and prices down. The pragmatic engineer in me takes utter delight in those aspects of the car, but the it has a averaged-out appeal that makes it palatable to most, but delectable to none. This is perfectly acceptable since Toyota is running a business, and the fundamental purpose of business is to make money so that it can stay in business. Businesses that don't make money are something else, like hobbies or charities. Thus, Toyota will march on with its vanilla Camry and great sales record and never sell one to me. Well, they will never sell a new one to me. A used one may be an eminently functional car, but if I am ever to buy a new car again, it needs to have some zing. Something like the latest generation Chevrolety Camaro. Now that's a car that has not been focus-grouped into styling oblivion. Even the current generation Ford Fusion has quite a bit more visual character than the Camry.

prezi?

2011-09-16T13:46:00.000+05:00

One more bit on presentations from yesterday's piece. A friend of mine told me about a presentation tool she recently used called Prezi, which fancies itself as the "the zooming presentation editor". Go take a look which I have had only moderate success doing through the small tubes of the internet here, but I have checked out their intro video on YouTube. It is evidently possible to use this tool incorrectly (or perhaps awesomely!) to induce nausea in the more sensitive members of your audience. Judging by their intro video, I can certainly see how that is possible if one were overzealous with the zooming and panning and general level of motion. Instead of the boring, "Game-changing presentations online" bit, maybe they can consider "Prezi, the Vomit Comet of presentation tools!"

All teasing aside, tools like this can significantly help with the display of information, particularly complex ideas or data, but the core focus of what a presentation is about should still be the speaker. The speaker controls the tempo and flow of a presentation and is the one to lead the audience through his or her story. A gifted presenter needs nothing more than themselves. A novice presenter is not helped by even the best presentation tools.

fake it till you make it

2011-09-15T14:13:00.001+05:00

I have previously mentioned that I have occasion to review the presentations of younger engineers. It can be very time consuming, but I actually enjoy the process since it has the satisfying feeling of helping someone improve his or her self. In this case, working on their presentation skills.

One of the most basic pieces of feedback I try to provide is that presenters need to project and express energy and enthusiasm. I have touched on the idea of being enthusiastic before but I saw another presentation yesterday that needed a strong dose of enthusiasm. It is very typical for first-time presenters to come out a bit flat and mechanical sounding. Their nerves often get the best of them and they go a bit fast and are not able to put emphasis on their key points. However, this guy yesterday sounded downright despondent at one point during hsi presentation when mentioning some training he had attended that related to his project. The line, "I attended the XYZ training" sounded like it came from the lips of a man who had just been told that his dog, the loyal companion of many years, had been hit by a truck. I had never before heard such a melancholy line during a business presentation.

New presenters also struggle needlessly with their presentation aids, usually PowerPoint, instead of focusing on the presentation's main event, which is themselves. There's the saying that a good actor can salvage a bad script or bad dialogue. (No? Well, a lot of others say something like that.) The corollary is that a bad actor can tank good dialogue. The same is true for presentations. For example, the guy from yesterday definitely had some work to do on his slides, but I told him that he could not change a single slide and still make it an effective presentation. Conversely, his slides could be perfect, but that would do nothing for his ability to project himself across the room and keep the audience's attention.

The weakness from yesterday's presentation was with the presenter, not his slides. His voice was flat, the pacing was the same speed the entire time, his use of a laser pointer was needless when he has these built in pointing tools called arms, and he stood in the same place the entire time. Afterwards, I expressed to him that he needs to view the presentation as a story and that he needs to tell a compelling and exciting story to his audience. While it is a business presentation, he still needs to engage the audience, control the room, and make his material come alive. That's not an easy thing to do, but a good first step is to sound confident, even if you don't feel confident.

I told him to "fake it till you make it" because projecting confidence, regardless of how you feel on the inside, will eventually lead you to feel confident. Additionally, your outward confidence will give others confidence in you and if you sound authoritative, then people will listen to you. This is a basic fact that almost anyone in a leadership position knows. This is also something that every playground bully knows, even if they lack the understanding of why this works.

Furthermore, speaking up and out in a room will also make you more aware of how to vary your speech. There is a volume other than 3 and a speed other than waytoofast. Speak up, slow down and continuously get feedback from your audience. If you're making a key point, but the audience is reading some miniscule text on your slide, then they will not be listening. My basic rules for slides are:
* If it appears on a slide, you must mention it.
* If something is not on a slide, you can still mention it.
That second point often seems lost on young presenters who equate their slides as their presentations. The slides are a presentation aid, but the words that come out of their mouths should be the most memorable thing the audience remembers.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: security theater

2011-09-13T13:00:00.000+05:00

To enter and leave Turkmenistan, I understandably fly through the capital city of Ashgabat. That airport is actually quite decent. Sure, there's no free Wi-Fi, but it is a nice building and a definite step up from the airport in Libreville, Gabon. Spacious terminal and gate areas, basic facilities, a couple shops, etc. I might even call it comparable to Washington-Dulles, but that's mostly an indictment about how shabby Dulles is as an airport and not a true comparison. However, it is plagued by the same problem U.S. airports now have, which is a great deal of security presence, but a questionable amount of actual substance.

When I left for days off more than a month ago, that was my first time departing through the international portion of the airport. To enter the airport building, your bags all go through an X-ray and you pass through a metal detector. This is an understandable security measure to prevent people from bringing in weapons into the airport building. However, it's just one guy watching the X-ray screen and sometimes one guy on the metal detector line. If you're discrete, once you are inside, you can watch the guy and his X-ray screen and see what he is looking at. I understand the basics of looking at such an image but short of handgun, I am not sure what would be flagged. Furthermore, without additional assistance, he has no way to stop people and control that access point. Once inside, it is a long walk to the international area and again, there is an X-ray for your bags (keeping in mind that you still have all of them as you have not checked-in yet) and a metal detector for you. Within 100 feet of that checkpoint, there is yet another X-ray for your luggage, but no metal detector for you. the purpose of this immediate X-ray is strange because there is nothing between the two checkpoints where you would pick-up or drop-off anything. You seriously leave one checkpoint, walk 100 feet, and then reach the next checkpoint. (The airport did seem somewhat oddly laid out as if it was meant to accommodate something else.) Go for another nice walk and then you get to the check-in counter. Finally. Checked bag drop and once more through security. Again, an X-ray for your carry-on and a metal detector for you. This feels normal in the sense that this is what you would see in a U.S. airport. Everything else prior to this point was bonus material. To tally it all up, that was three X-rays of my check-in luggage (that I saw), four X-rays of my carry-on bag, and three passes through a metal detector for me. You know what makes me feel safe? Reading the safety briefing card showing the airplane exits and oxygen mask procedure.

For flying to Balkanabat, it is much the same, but without the strange, standalone X-ray-only station. Security when entering the airport. Again to reach the check-in counter. Then once more after checking-in. Though at the last point, while you passed through a metal detector, they did not care if you set it off. It's a great deal of show, but how much is necessary and how much is beneficial. Certainly, anything other than the first and last check-points are redundant. And the first check-point can also be eliminated if baggage screening occurs after checking-in.

In the end, the real question is what is the purpose of airport security. In the U.S., it has become a theater meant to make people think it is safe to fly. In Turkmenistan, the impact it has on travelers is less clear to me. Is it meant to dissuade people from traveling with weapons or contraband? They only opened my bag because of some batteries, which is quite understandable since a pack of dense, metal cylinders could be bullets or something like mini gas canisters. However, this was at the second check-point, not the first, so what was the first guy looking for? Is it sophisticated enough to catch someone purposely trying to move something illicit? Probably not, since all the song and dance of U.S. airport security cannot stop that. Time and time again, the TSA has shown it cannot screen at anything close to a perfect success rate. Instead, I think all the security is there because they think it is supposed to be there. It feels like the good old, 'fake it till you make it' concept. Be doing it and acting like it is serious (and it is to some degree), it gives them an air of legitimacy and projects a sense of official power. Over time, appearances become reality and projections are built into actual substance.

9/11

2011-09-11T13:00:00.000+05:00

9/11, 10 years on, from the perspective of someone living overseas for the last 2.5 years.

No one here cares. I say it bluntly, not to be rude or callous, but to be simple and clear. This is not a day of significance here at this work camp. Admittedly, it is a small sample size of people and this work camp is more insulated than most from the outside, but no one ever mentioned today as an anniversary when I was in Hungary or Gabon either. I am sure I could find mention of it on the World News and CNN channels, but no one here has mentioned it at all and I have no expectation that anyone would even recognize this day as being significant to the U.S. without seeing something on the news first. Contrast this to the 4th of July where I had two different people point out to me when it was that day this year.

It is not a day that has significance to most non-Americans. It is a day that has prompted deep changes to American policy, both foreign and domestic. The impact and consequences of such changes have no doubt reached much of this world, even if only indirectly. However, most people will not know or associate those changes with this day from 10 years ago.

rental car review: Dodge Caliber

2011-09-10T12:41:00.000+05:00

It's been a good couple years since I posted a rental car review, but it's also been a couple years since I actually rented a car. Without further ado, let's tear into the Dodge Caliber I drove for a week in California.

I had the car for a week including a sojourn down to Los Angeles and back as well as plenty of running about in the Bay Area. The Caliber is adequate. That really feels like a suitable word for the vehicle. It is neither good nor bad. It's like the handrail on an escalator. It does it's job, but you would never actually buy one. The engine was terribly under-powered, though this is true of most rental vehicles. They are almost always base trim and base engine models since people who rent cars are short-term users who are not exactly investing in the long-term health of the vehicle. As a result, fuel economy in practical terms suffered due to a rash of peddle mashing. I am sure the car is capable of better fuel economy, but it should not have to be so carefully coaxed from the engine. At first, the steering felt stiff, but that was only in comparison to the rather soft minivan steering at home. I eventually came to decide that the steering felt properly stiff. To go with the suitably stiff steering was also very good engine braking. There seemed to be no easily findable light switch for dome light in the front. At the very least, it was not where it should have been, which is on the ceiling in the middle just aft of the top of the windshield. And the rear hatchback cover, to hide what you are keeping in the trunk does not actually cover the entire trunk. There are rather auspicious gaps on both edges that are a couple inches wide.

It was hardly all bad. There was only one DC power port, but they more than made up for it with an AC outlet (for prongs and everything) under the middle armrest. I could plug my normal phone charger straight into the car and it was glorious. The audio jack was also in plain sight instead of being squirreled away into some dank corner. Though once I realized the car came with Sirius satellite radio, the audio jack saw very little use. In terms of user functionality, it made for a good road-trip car for me. I had plenty of room, was able to almost get my seat perfect, no headroom issues, and only lacked some lumbar support. A second person would have also been fine as there was certainly plenty of trunk space for more bags. However, I am not sure if persons three and four would have been a good idea. It's not because of the rear seat leg room, which I never tested, but because the additional passenger/baggage weight would have only further bogged down the under-powered engine.

democracy, or something close to it

2011-09-09T14:08:00.000+05:00

According the Democracy Index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, I have been living in some rather interesting places for the last year-and-a-half. Congo (non-DRC one), Gabon, and Turkmenistan are not exactly on par with Norway, but hey, only one country can be first.

There is a cement factory opening in the Balkan province (which is the region of the country that Balkanabat is in). That, along with other official business, is apparently bringing the President through town in the next week or two. One of my colleagues told me that the city is rounding up stray cats and dogs (and presumably killing them) because of a request that no animals run across the road in front of the Presidential motorcade. I can see how that can be viewed as a security measure, albeit rather far-fetched. However, it might also be for cosmetic reasons. That same colleague told me that he has to change some windows in his house since it faces the main road and that all houses and apartments that face the main road need to have the same type of window installed before the President arrives.

The President is up for re-election in February of next year. If my work schedule stays more or less the same, it looks like I will be in the country when the it occurs on Feb 12, 2012.

a frustration and a realization

2011-09-08T14:34:00.000+05:00

I work for the man. Nor really, but it is a large, and more or less faceless corporation, which is to be expected when there are 100,000+ employees. Sure, there is the new CEO, but wait, this is such a publicity-shy company that even the CEO doesn't have a photo up on the public website. As this is a corporate environment, we partake in the great corporate activity of conference calls on a regular basis. And I absolutely despise anyone who does not mute their phone (except the speaker) during such calls. Yes, modern conference call systems can mute all the non-speakers' phones, but when a call is opened up for questions, there is the inevitable murmur of background noise. Then comes the moron who thinks this is now a good time to take another call and put the conference call on hold. You fool! You are using an office line that has hold music and now everyone who is still on the call has to listen to your infernal muzak. And since you aren't on our call, the desperate pleas to turn off the music fall, not onto deaf ears, but onto soft saxophone rhythms since you're that guy. If you don't know know who that guy is in your office, then there's a good chance that you are him (or her). You are the inconsiderate boob who is so oblivious that you do not even realize it which makes you a classic example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

This frustration has come with a basic realization. Every single time that I want to yell at someone (which is disappointingly often), it is actually a chance to ask a question. I have been slowly acquiring the skill of phrasing things in such a way as to get that desired outcome of an interaction with someone. Rather than yell, "You thunderous dolt, don't put the conference call on hold because then everyone has to listen to muzak" I can instead ask, "Did you know that our phone system has hold music?" Yes, I can take a more direct (and still polite) approach and say, "Placing the conference call on hold causes them to hear our phone system's hold music" but I have found that when people reach the answer more on their own, the realization is much more pronounced and memorable. It may take a few leading questions, but getting someone to proclaim a basic concept out loud is much stronger than force-feeding it down their throat. So as much as I may wish to mentally stab someone with mind-daggers for being obtuse, I know it will rarely help to browbeat them into submission. I feel like my year in Texas would have been dramatically different with a bit of this maturity that I have been acquiring overseas. So many ways it could have gone differently, but then again, there's no changing the past. Just going to ask more questions.

travel notes

2011-09-07T19:53:00.000+05:00

I often drop these in after a trip, so before my most recent treks fades too far from my memory, here goes.

It has actually been quite a bit of travel within the last two weeks starting with the run to Vegas, then onward to D.C. before going back to SFO (via LAX) and then the big trip back to Turkmenistan. Flying domestically, I was reminded how terrible the legacy carriers are in the States. It seems I will be flying with United when possible for the sake of miles and flyer status, but my cross-country trek with them to D.C. made me realize how awful they are. No personal entertainment system, no included meal, $25 for the first checked bag, older planes and at least one awful employee working in Washington-Dulles. (In the interest of providing customer feedback, I did indeed lodge a complaint with them about their check-in counter service in IAD.) At least the checked bag fee will go away once I get my Premier Status with them, which I will have as soon as they recognize my first trip to Turkmenistan. That trip recognition is another thorn in my side as I mistakenly flew under Lufthansa's program instead of United's program. In order to get the miles moved over, United is asking for me to get a written letter from Lufthansa certifying that they have removed the miles from their program (so they are not double-counted) and then mail that letter along with my original boarding passes, ticket receipt, and my account number (which they already have) to a PO box in Rapid City, SD where they can then proceed to handle it like a valued guitar. One more thing. The only reason I rented from Hertz while I was in D.C. was to get miles with United, but Hertz is now giving me some garbage about getting the rental to count for United's program. Based on this, I will never rent from Hertz again unless I am forced. It will be all Enterprise, all the time which always has very good customer service.

Whatever. Once I get status with them, they will treat me like a real person. Until then, it's crap, crap, and more crap from them. Or I can try to fly with Delta and keep my status I have with them so it doesn't expire. I flew so much with Delta and their partners while living in Hungary and Congo/Gabon that I hit status with them very quickly. But United keeps a hub in SFO so I'll at least get something out of them.

Lufthansa operates a new Airbus A380 on their daily San Francisco to Frankfurt route. It is a nice plane, but don't end up in a middle seat on a 10-11 hour long flight. Flying international reminds me of all the things I like about flying. There is something about the strange mini-versions of everything that I really like. Overseas flights allow me to catch-up on all the movies I have missed living in bustling metropolises like Port Gentil, Gabon and Balkanabat, Turkmenistan. Fast Five? A tour de force of cinematic excellence if I may say so. Those tiny little meals? You can think whatever you wish of me, but I like airline food. I find it so amusingly novel, perhaps in the same way that people like little kittens and puppies. It is by no means the fine dining of In-N-Out, but the food as this single-serving-ness (a la Fight Club) that I like. I also enjoy most of my single serving seat mates. It gives me a chance to practice having banal conversations and acting normal.

Frankfurt airport is huge. It is the hub for Lufthansa. It's the kind of airport where there are not enough gates so the less glamorous flights (like the one to Ashgabat via Baku) is reached by taking a bus from the gate. And it is a long bus ride. We definitely went more than a full mile from the gate off into the Lufthansa Cargo area as we passed some windowless MD-11s with their no-longer-current trijet engine layout. Speaking of trijets, a Boeing 727 used to be the plane from Ashgabat to Balkanabat, but this time it was a very new 737-700. Before I left Frankfurt, I had a chance to buy cigarettes for the first time in my life during my layover in Frankfurt. Of course, they were not for me, but rather for a co-worker who told me that due to customs problems in Turkmenistan, prices here had tripled and quality had gone down. Apparently, I am not knowledgeable about which Marlboro brand (classic red, silver, gold, menthol, etc) is their "light" version. I consider this a good thing.

The Frankfurt to Ashgabat flight does a one hour layover in Baku where about 90% of the passengers get off. Does this mean no one goes to Turkmenistan? Not really. I imagine most people who enter from Europe fly on Turkish airlines to Istanbul or with Turkmenistan Airlines which flies directly to Frankfurt with no stopover. Though It is strange to be on a plane that is almost empty and where there are probably 2-3 passengers for every crew member. And then all of a sudden, I'm in Ashgabat, this time with a visa so not having to wait in that line and getting to breeze (in a relative sense) through immigration. Home sweet home.

tuesdays in turkmenistan: false identity

2011-09-06T22:25:00.000+05:00

In less than two days back in Turkmenistan, I am pleased to report that no fewer than five different people have mistaken me as or made a comment that I look Kazakh or Turkmen. It started with two different comments in a client office in Ashgabat. First, a comment at a morning meeting when I was introduced to several people for the first time. After the meeting, we ate with the client and while doing so, someone everyone else knew came into the restaurant and came up to the table to shake everyone's hand. When I said "Hello" as I shook his hand, his reply was "Oh, you are not Turkmen." Indeed, I am not.

Back in the office, I was setup in the visitor's room since I'm not based in Ashgabat and there were a couple new to the office engineers including a Turkmen guy transferred back here from Nigeria. He thought I was Kazakh. The other guy in the office was Kazakh and he thought I was Turkmen. Nice to know I'm so visually flexible.

At the end of the day, I went with a local employee to have dinner and we took a taxi and since about all I can muster in Russian without having m pronunciation mocked is privet (hello) and spasibo (thank you) so of course we were speaking to each other in English. But the taxi driver just kept looking back at me in the mirror and I realized he was confused, or at least puzzled as to why we would be speaking English. Upon getting out of the cab, the driver asked my colleague a question. It was apparently to ask if my colleague was an English teacher. Not exactly.

Finally, I was having dinner in the canteen this evening and a new engineer trainee (not in my segment) was at our table trying to guess where I was from. I thought the accent was a dead giveaway, but she guessed Kazakh. Trainees have so much to learn.

In conclusion, I guess it's good to be back at my home away from home. Or maybe it's just my home. Whatever.

back in Turkmenistan

2011-09-05T13:00:00.000+05:00

Whelp, I am back in Turkmenistan, ready to swash-buckle about for seven weeks before I can continue to rack up frequent flyer miles. Blog posting will certainly be resuming. I have a lot of half-formed thoughts that I am eager to poorly articulate into this 7 reader forum.

back in town, staying busy

2011-08-16T13:09:00.000+05:00

I have been back in California for a few days now. It's been low key so far, but about to get much busier with a wedding, road-trip, Vegas-trip, then DC trip planned for an exciting flurry of activity.

eight weeks in - on my way

2011-08-09T15:46:00.004+05:00

By the time this posts I will have started my journey back to the U.S. from Balkanabad. First, a short flight back to Ashgabat, an evening there, then a red-eye to Frankfurt via Baku, and ending with a nice nonstop to SFO. (I can taste the airline miles and they will taste like premium status after a couple more rotations. Perhaps this time I can avoid ending up in a middle seat.)

This first hitch through Turkmenistan has been a little longer than the prescribed seven weeks and that is fine by me. It was a good run with a lot of atypical challenges which I can envision becoming typical challenges. Carrying over the sentiment from last week, this has been really great. I look forward to being back in California and I look forward to coming back here in about three weeks.

In the meantime, it's time to see family and friends, eat some different food, and generally have a good time. Maybe I'll sprinkle in just enough work to make sure I have a good transition back and all will be good.

back next week

2011-08-04T21:28:00.003+05:00

Barring a change in my flight plans, I will be landing at SFO next Wednesday and should be around for about three weeks, though I do not have a return date at the moment. With that said, what's going on in the Bay Area? I've also been noodling around with the idea of trying to go by the greater Los Angeles and possibly San Diego area before August 20th. And then there's that thing the weekend after that with that guy who is going to do that other thing a couple months from now. You either know what I'm talking about or not. (Hint: It may involve poor fiscal decisions.)

Rotation is going to be wicked awesome. Oh wait, wrong regional phrase. I meant hella cool.

seven weeks in - this is better

2011-08-02T13:25:00.001+05:00

As a place to work and live and be, this is a much better location than Gabon. It's a mix of things, but simply put, everything here works better. This is not to say that everything here works well, but it is better. Of course, relative comparisons are hardly worthwhile if you say something is better than what you had in the past if all it does is suck less but still suck. However, I would venture to say the total suckage here is much lower than even my typically pessimistic expectations.

Please pardon my excessive use of the word "suck" and its variants. I cannot help but be reminded of a scene from The Simpsons (since everything can remind me of something from that show) where Homer uses the word a bit often:
"Yeah Moe, that team sure did suck last night. They just plain sucked. I've seen teams suck before, but they were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked."

Anyhow, I like it here, though that is still colored by the relative recency of Gabon. I did not truly admit it while I was in Gabon, or even say it when I was back in California last December, but I was not happy in Gabon. This is not to say I was unhappy, but I was definitely not enjoying myself. I could have held out there and easily worked there another year, perhaps even indefinitely, but it would not have been a happy year. It was only when I was back in California this Spring that many of you probably heard me say how glad I was to be out of Gabon. It's hard to capture the exact essence of what did not fit, but Gabon is not the place for me. While West Africa is not on the top of my list of places to go, I don't have a blanket objection to the region. I rather enjoyed my time in Congo and believe Gabon is a specifically bad fit.

This location captures some of the elements of working in Hungary and briefly in Congo that I enjoyed. There is a sense of community here both amongst the overall base and a smaller one amongst the expats that makes everything more enjoyable. In Hungary, it was social atmosphere of the city and being able to go out and have a drink with all the guys. Congo was a big base where you saw lots of people and we also played soccer in my brief time there. Here, with the camp as a focal point, there are dinners/parties by the pool for various reasons. There is vibe at this base that Gabon never had.

There will always be client that is the most frustrating or least favorite or just slightly crazy. Even if all you had were good clients, one of them would still be relatively frustrating or crazy. This place is no exception, but all problems of this kind have solutions. Gabon however, had clients from a particular country that were very difficult to work with, seemingly as part of their culture since the most difficult ones were from the same country. We had a meeting, a technical meeting presenting a product, but the client engineer saw fit to state "No work, no pay!" increasingly loudly at least six times during the meeting. OK dude, I wasn't listening the first five times you said it, but that sixth time really hit home. Here, we might have our own client like that, but if they say it in Russian, then it doesn't make me want to punch them in the face as badly since I won't understand what they are saying.

The downside of this location is that it lacks access. This is a camp location for expats meaning we live within the walls and rarely see the city. Yes, we can and do occasionally eat out, but it will never be the same as living in the city. The lack of access also extends to resources available for work. We have to be a little oasis because outside support is difficult to get and slow to materialize. But if it was easy, then it just wouldn't be as much as much fun nor as satisfying to actually get work done.

Now, this has been seven weeks and I am in theory on a 7x3 rotation, but I am not leaving quite yet. One more week for this first rotation and then I will be back. There is the chance it is two more weeks, but I should know by the weekend if that other extra week is going to happen.

trying to explain baseball

2011-07-30T14:01:00.002+05:00

As a companion piece to yesterday's post trying to explain football, today is a brief bit on baseball. Unlike American football, baseball is at least popular in some other countries so it is not asked about as often. For instance, I have never had to explain to a Venezuelan why baseball is played in the U.S. However, it does receive its fair share of complaints from non-Americans who find fault with the game, especially its pace. However, in contrast to American football, those complaints are very similar to the same ones that non-fans from America also have about baseball.

American football is of course not something for everyone in the U.S. However, even domestic non-fans understand the sport's place in American culture and can at least comprehend why the sport is so popular because they end up surrounded by signs of the sport's obvious popularity. This is an insight foreigners rarely have and explaining football's popularity is much more difficult because it is hard to easily explain how football is able to hold great cultural significance to someone who has not lived in that culture. Contrast this with baseball which, despite being America's pastime, has ceded the number one spot of professional sports to its beefy football brother. In doing so, it also draws less fascination from foreigners who rarely ask why baseball is poplar in the U.S. Well, at least the ones I talk with. Instead, they ask why is the sport so slow and they instantly get their answer on why it is not the dominant sport in the U.S. The "too slow" refrain is all too common, but also not fair. Again, Jack comes through with a theory on why many dislike baseball based on a lack of understanding of the finer points of the sport.

I have yet to get a really good opportunity to explain baseball to a non-fan here. It doesn't come up as a topic as often as American football, but perhaps I can win someone over.

In a note related to yesterday's pool party, I met one of the two Peace Corps Volunteers in Balkanabat. She lives with the family of one of our employees. There are only 29 PCVs in Turkmenistan and that number is gradually going down.

trying to justify american football

2011-07-29T11:31:00.003+05:00

Living overseas, I sometimes find myself trying to explain to people why American football is so popular in the U.S. It usually goes with the corollary of explaining why international football (aka: soccer) is not as popular in the U.S. as it is in the rest of the world.

Thank goodness, my friend Jack has addressed part of this question before. Others have also answered, but none of them are as cool, so we'll disregard their comments. But seriously, my stock answer has focused on explaining how football is part of American culture through its existence as a youth sport and into high school and then into college. Athletics in American high schools has some similarities with youth sports in other parts of the world. However, sports in American colleges and universities is very different than collegiate athletics in the rest of the world. And with football being this monolithic presence on many large university campuses, it holds a well-entrenched place in the typical week of many college students and plenty of non-students. I have met many people who were huge fans of the state school's football team just because they lived in the same state.

History partly explains why American football is popular here but not many other places. The sport developed into its more or less modern form here so it has incumbency status. With history and culture being what they are, and now combined with business being what it is, football is not going away anytime soon. Nor will it be supplanted by another sport, especially not soccer for commercial dominance in the U.S. The interesting question to ask is if soccer would be as popular in the U.S. as it is in the rest of the world if football had never existed? I am not convinced it would be. There's a certain joy within the American spirit that seems to relish being different than the rest of the world. This is a much deeper social question about American society, but at its core is the concept of American exceptionalism.

Anyway, there's another pool party tonight and I'm sure this will come up again like it always does. Yes, a pool party. And yes, it is a difficult life.

breaking bad and meth

2011-07-27T12:52:00.004+05:00

Breaking Bad is another one of the programs that airs on the crime channel that we get here. Compared to my overtly negative feelings for The Sopranos, I have a much more positive disposition to Breaking Bad. I rarely expect television to be realistic and Breaking Bad is hardly the most plausible program out there. Early on, it was tangentially related to science enough to be interesting to me. Now, it has really captured the desperation and fear that drive the decisions that the protagonist makes.

I am also intrigued by the show for two other reasons. The first is the awful Pontiac Aztek, arguably the ugliest mass-produced car in recent history, driven by the main character. I think it's fantastic as a vehicle for him because it's nearly universal ugliness and appearance of being down-trodden so thoroughly reflected our lead in the beginning of the show. He has grown, but the car has stayed the same, partly because it is necessary for him to maintain a certain appearance. And while I love how ugly the car is and how terrible its commercials were back in the day, it is evidently a decent automobile in the eyes of some.

The second reason is far less hilarious. One of the central themes of the show is the production and sale of crystal meth. It is therefore very suitable for the show to be set in New Mexico, a place I lived for three years. When I first moved there is when I really first become aware of what meth was and what it did to people. There was various drug-awareness training at work, but the most compelling thing was a big billboard at the edge of town showing a picture of someone with meth mouth. (Note: not a pleasant picture, but far tamer than what was on the billboard.) Compared to most other states, use of meth in New Mexico is very prevalent. And its use in the oilfield is also distressingly common in the western states. Farmington is hardly ground zero for crystal meth, but in hindsight, it is now very clear that one guy in particular at work was using. Some days he was fantastic at work. Other days, he barely went through the motions and was prone to very unusually timed stretches of fatigue. I never really keyed into it at the time since a lot of people were a little 'off' compared to what I had grown up with, but I later learned he had all sorts of problems and meth was one of them. If you must know, he eventually got fired.

six weeks in - trees

2011-07-26T13:38:00.002+05:00

There are trees planted all over the city. This is a desert, but it's not as arid as New Mexico. It seems like the relative proximity to the Caspian Sea helps keep the air from getting too dry. While low on rain, this city is able to sustain the many trees planted here.

I asked around about the trees. It seems that the most popular tree in town was mostly planted starting back in the 1950s when research was done into what type of tree could successfully grow in this climate and type of soil. I cannot identify the trees in question and have been meaning to get some photos of them. I want to see the leafsnap app make its way to the Android platform so I can do some sleuthing around town. Of course, I can't geo-locate anything since that won't work here, but I can always take pictures and then compare once I get back home. (3G is not exactly a real thing here.) The trees also produce a green fruit, about the size of a fist, but I have been told it is not edible. I have decided not to challenge that assertion.

Oddly enough, there are also pine trees planted here. There are many planted in the camp area of the base, and I have seen some around town. There is no way there are native to this area. Well, evidently none of the trees are native to the area, but the pines stand out quite obviously. The same person who told me the first tree started to be planted int he 50's also told me they are now planting a larger variety of trees to see what else can take to the soil here.

This being a desert, where does all the water in the town come from? I keep asking people and no one seems to know. I find that odd. And it bothers me enough that I will keep asking.

earnings and new CEO

2011-07-25T22:18:00.004+05:00

Last Friday, Q2 earnings were reported. The company is not bankrupt. As always, Seeking Alpha has a transcript and you can also download a mp3 recording of the call from the company's public website. I would link to it, but then I'd be doing all the work.

The day before the earnings release, a public announcement was made about the, next CEO, who is the current COO. As executive succession goes, this was incredibly expected. This has been clearly telegraphed for more than a year starting with when he was made COO in the first place, which was a position that did not exist prior to his appointment. And then he started to participate in the quarterly earnings conference calls. And the investor conference. And then was nominated to the board of directors. And it was known the current CEO would retire before the end of the year. So, not shocking.

meetings

2011-07-24T10:44:00.002+05:00

Meetings. Best I can tell, I have not posted on this topic before which seems odd since it is such an obsession of mine. Perhaps it is only a recent one born from wiling away much of each day when I was in Gabon in meetings. We had a meeting the other day on a personnel and time-sheet thing that was as exciting as it sounds. The real end result of that event was a not-quite-soapbox moment for me at dinner explaining why it was an ineffective use of everyone's time. I am oddly passionate about this subject and know the many shapes a meeting will try to take whether it be a traditional meeting, morning meeting, status report, conference call, online web conference, training courses, and all manner of presentations. Yes, presentations are a type of meeting. It pretends not to be, but it is.

Nothing here will be shocking or ground-breaking. It is entirely possible I heard much of this during some training material I was once forced to sit through, through I do not remember so that goes to show how effective the material might have been. Regardless, just to have a chance at an effective meeting, these things should be noted:
* Purpose/Objective - Like anything else done in business, a meeting must have a purpose. It should be something that the initiator or leader of the event can state in a clear and concise manner. No purpose means no reason for a meeting. All subsequent points can be easily connected back to this first point.
* Pre/post-work - Meetings are infinitely more productive if participants are told what to have ready prior to the meeting. And then the long-term effectiveness is greatly enhanced by post-meeting work and follow-up.
* Time - The shorter the better. Anything over an hour is rarely effective and really 30 minutes is all most people can handle in a single sitting.
* Energy/Enthusiasm - Especially true for traditional presentations, but any meeting leader or presenter needs to be enthusiastic. If you're not enthusiastic, then your audience and other attendees will instantly ask themselves why should they care if you yourself are just going through the motions?

I have given a lot of feedback to people who need to make internal (and to a lesser extent external) presentations. This has mostly been for younger engineers and supervisors presenting internally for projects and promotion related things. The first thing I always challenge people on is making everything they say contribute to the objective of their presentation. Don't waste words, don't lose your audience, don't lose focus. What is the purpose and how will you accomplish that objective?

people not dumber, just faster

2011-07-22T12:06:00.003+05:00

As I mused on how awful I thought The Sopranos program was a couple days ago, I revealed a frustration and concern that people might be just worse overall these days compared to prior generations. Again, this is just a concern that I can easily acknowledge is not well founded. What we have today, and increasingly so with each passing day, is speed. We can communicate faster today than ever before and that allows all of us, including those blissfully unaware of the Dunning-Kruger effect to blog, tweet, and 'like' their way into apparent relevance.

These platforms reveal what existed all along, which is that 10% of the people are less intelligent than 90% of the people. The internet does not portend an awakening of the era of ignorance. The ignorance has always been there, but it had previously lacked such free and accessible vehicles of dissemination. For example, let's talk about weekends.

This month started on a Friday and is also 31 days long, which means the last day of the month will be a Sunday. This makes for five Friday-to-Sunday weekends that will occur this month. If you recall, there was a thing that went around the internet last October marveling at how such an occurrence of five Friday-to-Sunday weekends in a single month was incredibly rare and had not happened for several hundred years. That is of course blindingly stupid since there are only 14 different calendars that could ever occur so to suggest that one of them had not happened for several hundred years is moronic. (A year can start on one of seven days and there are also leap year versions so any given year must come from one of those 14 calendars.) Nonetheless, many people believed this and posted it and forwarded it and were generally removed from my list of friends if they were so cognitively challenged. The great irony is that January 2010 also possessed the five Fri-to-Sun weekend property just nine months prior to the October idiocy fest. As platforms for spreading misinformation are more easily accessed, we see that many people will believe novel and interesting sounding "truths" regardless of their accuracy.

Despite this obvious downside to the internet's easy connectivity, the system makes me hopeful. Used properly, it possesses the powerful ability to spread knowledge, advance real truth, and give people access to information that would otherwise never reach them. It is also a place where nuance can exist in all its glory. The shades of gray that make up almost everything worth knowing can exist in true 64-bit rendering instead of a paltry 256 color scheme. The great risk is that this frontier of neutrality that the internet possesses will be taken away. We must continue to promote the openness and suffer the fools that come with it because that is a far superior trade to limiting what we can share and learn.

half right

2011-07-21T11:54:00.002+05:00

That half right bit I mentioned two days ago reminds me of one of the best lines I have ever managed to say while working. Back when I was in New Mexico, hardly the black mecca of America and especially not in Farmington, I was supervising a job and everyone else on my crew happened to be black. That also happened to be every single black person who worked at that base for us at the time including one guy who would not normally be with my sub-segment. Plus, I had a loan-out engineer trainee from Angola with me that day. Towards the end of the job, I was watching returns and standing next to a rig hand who, totally unsolicited, remarked, "So you're just about the only white boy on this crew, huh?" I replied, "Well, you've got that half right" and could barely keep a straight face. Context matters.

Edit: Apparently, I blogged about this before. Well, this post stays anyway because it's funny and relevant to the recent discussion.

five weeks in - origins II - Turkmen people

2011-07-20T11:49:00.000+05:00

Turkmen people are very diverse in their appearance. And despite my own appearance, it is not where I am from. As I remarked yesterday, while many have made the expected comment that I could possibly pass for Kazakh, a few have remarked that I could be Turkmen, or at least I could until I open my mouth. If I, or any of my doppelgangers, might be Turkmen but are obviously not, then where are Turkmen people from?

As always, the internet has the answer in the form of Wikipedia’s handy entry on Turkmen people. Seriously, give that page a read and I’ll share my own observations. The concept of being Turkmen, like many nationalities is more than simple (or very complex) ethnography. It is also strongly driven by the cultural history of the people of the region. I have been asking my colleagues as much as I can about where in the country there are from, what they speak in that region (Russian or Turkmen or other) and their own take on what it means to be Turkmen.

Early on, I managed to have a good chat with one of our engineers about Turkmenistan and the people and the borders and the culture. Like many nations, the borders are a mix of sensible geographic boundaries and seemingly arbitrary straight lines. Bordering Iran and Afghanistan does not exactly make this the geopolitical place to be. However, my colleague informed me that Turkmenistan had generally good relations with its neighbors, though he expressed concern about the stability of Afghanistan and how that might impact people near the border. He mentioned that it was common for some villages in the southeastern part of the country to be all or nearly all Afghani people who just happen to live on the Turkmen side of the border. He also remarked that there were villages in Iran of mostly Turkmen people. He then said that these respective people had been there many, many generations and that it was not an issue with where they lived, but that it sometimes seemed like the borders were made wrong. There is a similar issue of blurred borders in the northeast where much of the border with Uzbekistan is along or near a major river. One of our other engineers is from that region and prefers speaking Russian or Uzbek over Turkmen. People live where they live.

With these blurred borders, it’s not much of a surprise that people in Turkmenistan look so diverse. There is a certain look of what I might say a proto-typical Turkmen man should look like, but much like a typical American, that doesn’t mean much. Some people here have that Turkmen look with dark hair, dark eyes, slightly olive skin tone but not much, and let’s say a bit shorter than the average American. But really now, that’s not descriptive at all and so just look at a picture of the current President who I would say has a strong Turkmen look. Plenty of people here appear to be of Russian descent (though that is arguably a loaded term given how diverse Russian is). But if you imagine a Russian from the European side, of the country with fairer hair and skin, then yes, many people here have some element of that appearance. Others here definitely show shades of Persian ancestry and others yet possess a very East Asian appearance. It’s very much an intersection of different cultures that occurred here in Central Asia and everything in between.

Part of it is also a matter of how people identify and associate themselves. As I indicated, one of our engineers feels more Uzbek and speaks Russian back home. Another engineer from a port city on the Caspian said both her parents are Russian and came here for work, but she was born here. She speaks Russian at home, schools were taught in Russian, but she identifies as Turkmen because this is her home, even though she said her Turkmen listening comprehension is only ok, and her Turkmen speaking is poor. I found that especially interesting because it is a natural bias of mine to assume people have an affinity towards their ancestry. Even though the U.S. is a nation of immigrants, a part of me forgets that immigration occurs to other countries as well and people adopt other places as their new homes. Turkmenistan is that new home for some people and an old home for many more.

five weeks in - origins I - a matter of context

2011-07-19T13:18:00.008+05:00

Where are you from?

It is a standard question asked to and amongst the expatriate employees here (and other locations I have worked). My standard answer is simply, "The U.S." which usually leads to the follow-up question of which state I am from. Lately, my answer to that last one has been getting a lot of Schwarzenegger comments and then I must explain that he is no longer the Governator. It also gets a lot of other follow-up questions since I am, well, me. And me being me, aside from being awesome, is also puzzling or at least interesting to some people until they ask a few more questions.

Perhaps it's the concept that people from the US are supposed to look like some sort of "typical" American, as if there were such a thing. I suppose there is a theoretical median American or average American, but with the variety that exists from one person to the next, the concept of "typical" does not really hold much use. Nonetheless, my accent has outed me as an American very quickly to many of my better-traveled colleagues. Some have even said they knew I was from California the moment I spoke. One Polish-American guy here, who was born and raised in Poland and went to high school and university in the U.S. told me I had a "very strong" California accent. Of course, I jokingly countered that that means I have no accent and that I speak standard television and news broadcaster English. A different guy told me I spoke just like a Malaysian guy he used to work with. Or, more accurately, that guy had an American accent. And, since many people in Malaysian are ethnic Chinese, he thought I might have been from there as well. That's one more for the list of places I could be from!

As for being ethnic Chinese, well, that's half right. Whether people can figure that out is highly context dependent. As I rather expected, many people here have remarked that I look Kazakh and a few have said possibly even Turkmen, but that latter one is rather interesting and I promise to come back to that. Here, there are a handful of Kazakh expats plus it is next door so the idea that someone might be Kazakh is very reasonable. In the U.S., I have never been, and would never expect to be, asked if I was Kazakh. Instead, what people might assume or guess about my ancestry often depends on who I am with.

Context matters. Let’s say I’m with a group of white people. In that context, I do not appear to be white, or at least not entirely so. Amongst a group of Asian people, the same basic thing occurs. With that contrast, most people who have been around plenty of Asian people will know I’m not entirely Asian either. However, it is interesting to note that in the context of being around all Asian people, I have been told both things. Some people have thought I was entirely white and others have thought I was entirely Asian. So in addition to context, personal experience also matters. Where am I? What am I wearing? What am I doing? What am I saying? People will seek to reach a conclusion with the information available even if they do not mean to reach a particularly firm one. Your mind wants to conclude something so it can use that as a starting point for something else.

Two weeks ago, when I was at a well site, my non-Turkmen and non-Russian speaking self was clearly not local to others on location. However, my origins were apparently up for debate amongst non-colleagues (as my colleagues have already asked me these questions). After the job was done, I was speaking with an older Serbian guy who had worked all over, but had settled down and spent the last 14 years in Turkmenistan. He knew enough English to be understood and I knew how to smile and nod in agreement. We talked about where I was from and my stock replies about the U.S. and California were of little help to the apparent debate amongst the people on location. He asked further and as soon as I said my mother is Chinese, it was a big “ah-ha!” moment for him and he seemed quite jubilant as he had told everyone else that he was convinced I was half something Asian. Regrettably, there are no cash prizes for guessing correctly.

sopranos - dreck

2011-07-18T13:57:00.002+05:00

We get a few channels through the satellite here and one of them is the Fox Crime channel and one of the programs shown on that channel is The Sopranos. I understand that it was a commercial and critical success and ground-breaking for its time, but frankly, I think it is awful.

Is it because its time was ten years ago and it now feels dated and the content is not as groundbreaking? No, I think not. There are elements that are obviously dated and perhaps it is not as edgy when compared to modern premium cable fare, but I have no real qualms with the style and cinematography. When I was watching The Wire earlier this year, another critical success from roughly the same era, it also felt contemporary enough despite obviously dated surveillance methods. The Sopranos must suffer from a different issue.

Is it my bias against that overwrought, stereotypical accent? Like many U.S. regional accents, it causes my blue-blooded self to look down on all who speak it with the disdain only someone with Gold Medallion flyer status can be allowed to possess. Or not. In reality, I suppose the accents are somewhat believable and are apparently authentic. I do have a cognitive bias against that Jersey accent, but after a couple episodes, I was able to look past it and now it's just present instead of pushing itself to the forefront of my attention.

Is the problem with the characters themselves? I think this is much more likely. Dramatic television is built around compelling characters that you care about. If you care about the character and what might happen to him/her, then you will keep watching to find out if their atypical and fictional-television worthy life keeps moving along. A simple enough concept that is of course difficult to successfully execute. In The Sopranos, I just cannot muster up any feeling of caring about the characters. They all strike me as interminable whiners. My first thought after a scene between Tony Soprano and his psychiatrist (who I hope meets an untimely demise in the show's storyline) is that Tony reminds me of Holden Caulfield. I haven't even read The Catcher in the Rye since high school and could barely tell you much about the plot or themes of the novel, but listening to Tony talk to his psychiatrist instantly reminded me of Holden and his complaints about all the "phony" people. Tony Soprano is Holden Caulfield? That is a question for a college student in desperate need for a mid-semester paper to explore, but it captures the core of my problem with the show.

Perhaps the entire program was successful, not only for its authenticity and groundbreaking-ness, but also because it featured a cast of whiners that audience members could instantly relate with. Shows are often at least partly successful during their respective eras by embracing some reasonably popular sentiment of said era. (It has to be popular enough for the show to keep enough viewers to justify keeping the show on the air.) In this case, the sentiment was whining. The Sopranos gave my generation and the one before mine a dramatic show full of people like ourselves! And knowing that the show was as popular as it was only makes that more aggravating since I know lots of people thought this was good and relate-able.

I'm not sure when it happened, or perhaps it happens to many people around my age, but there's a sense that people have become worse. Just generally worse at everything. Did we undergo a cultural shift in the late 90s and early 2000s that allowed for The Sopranos to be embraced by so many? A shift towards the "not my fault" culture? This is my biggest problem with the show and watching Tony Soprano prattle on to his psychiatrist, because it mirrors where I feel like we as a country have stumbled so badly. In reality, the country is not as bad off as I probably think it is, but it will not get better if "not my fault" grows larger.

copy all the things!

2011-07-18T10:17:00.004+05:00

A copy, or duplicate, is pretty standard in the business world. One for you, one for me. Triplicate is hardly something to bat an eye at because all sorts of third party actors, often government agencies, might want/need a copy. Here, we have gone not one, but two steps further to the realm of the quintuplicate. We care not for your environmental outcry or desires for a paperless office. We are bold visionaries imagining an office that contains nothing but load-bearing paper stacked to support the roof above our heads!

china on the ground

2011-07-16T09:29:00.006+05:00

Following-up on my, previous post about being in the field last week, I saw something else that I did not mention before: Chinese rigs. Perhaps it was a bit distant, but in my photo from last time there is a rig in the distance just left of center. That is a fairly new rig, Chinese-made, and essentially a copy of another rig builder's design. That particular rig is not operated by a Chinese company, but they are here. Not far from that spot, there were workover rigs operating that were flying Chinese flags. That in itself was a bit odd, especially here where I would have thought it would be frowned upon, because while many rigs fly a flag, it is almost always a flag of the logo of the company drilling or the flag of the country the rig is in.

In Gabon, it was Sinopec. Here, it is CNPC. The Chinese operators are drilling in Turkmenistan and pretty much anywhere else they can, especially less reputable locales under various levels of embargo scrutiny. Many have expounded on this issue of China's attempt to secure resources before so I will not belabor the point. And it is not exclusive to oil and gas either. It is interesting to see this resource play occurring right in front of me.

four weeks in - the desert

2011-07-12T12:13:00.005+05:00

No man's land. That is the rough translation for the name of the field I had the fine pleasure of visiting last week. Barsa field is a very large and very old field here. I snapped a few more photos, but this one captures most of the essence of the area. We happened to be in a low area of the field with sand dunes forming our horizon in every direction. The photo is from one of those dunes looking back into the low area, but the field extends much further beyond the horizon so the photo captures most of what you might see. If you were hoping for a cavalcade of flora and fauna then I would recommend against planning a trip here. However, there were camels, but their publicist did not allow photos taken of them.

There is something deeply fascinating about working in the desert. For me, it is the contrast between the seemingly endless monotony of the landscape and unforgiving environment mixed with the oases of industry that our work brings. A compressor station here, a rig there, and a pipeline into the horizon surrounded by the continuous and slowly shifting sand dunes. Being in what feels like the middle of nowhere, we can somehow bring highly specialized equipment together in a coordinated enough fashion that we actually accomplish something productive.

Perhaps I have never quite gotten over the seeming absurdity of oil and gas production. We're putting holes into the ground, miles deep at times, that are no more than a foot across by the bottom, and this is effective? This? This is a process that works? Apparently. And we do it over and over again. Sometimes, just for a moment, I marvel that this is even cost-effective at all when considering the time, resources, and specialized equipment that are required to drill just a single well. Like anything else done on a large scale (and this is large-scale when you think about activity in a global sense) it is quite interesting that the extraction of oil does not cost more than it already does. And doing all this in the desert where supply chains are stretched and water is limited only adds to the sense of absurdity.

Something else I have never quite gotten over or perhaps even figured out is when I mentally step back and ask myself "How did I end up in the middle of a Turkmen desert?" That's also part of what makes it so exciting. Being back in the field reminds me of how much fun it was when I first started and the sense of adventure that the newness always brought. Now, it's more newness and more adventure and still fun.

This area, and the other one I have seen, is littered with abandoned equipment totally unlike anything I have ever seen in this business. There were old rigs that had been laid over (either by man or nature) and left to decay into the sand. Pipes of all sorts were strewn about the landscape. Sand-filled industrial equipment half-buried by the winds was plentiful. I cannot help but wonder about the value of the metal and the availability of recycling. Everywhere else I have been, scrap metal is always worth taking in for recycling, but if there is no plant that can process the metal here, then it will just sit in the desert until it disintegrates into millions of rusty flakes. Fluids are likewise abandoned here with the absorbent sand masking how much is put onto the ground. There are signs that oil, drilling fluids, produced water, and all manner of other fluids have been put upon the ground and left to manage their own gradual dispersion.

What will the environmental legacy be? I am not sure and this is a far cry from US and European regulations on spills and disposals. The desert, for all its apparent emptiness, holds many resources and many stories.

pool, and a teaser

2011-07-09T19:30:00.004+05:00

As expected, this has been a week of a scrambling and it isn't quite over either. However, I have been making the time to relax in the pool they have at the camp. Nothing quite like floating in water and looking up at the stars. If your google-fu is strong enough, you should be able to find the base and spot the poor inside of it. Next Tuesday's weekly installment will be the story of this scenic picture and what I was doing there. Can you feel the suspense?

spell my name with an S

2011-07-07T10:12:00.001+05:00

No one can tell me if it should be "Balkanabat" with a "t" or "Balkanabad" with a "d". I have seen it both ways online, on maps, and even at work, where depending on the business system being used, the spelling is different.

Edit: The "d" or "t" issue is a common one. There are many names that could end with either letter including the given names of many people. I've seen plenty of people with names spelled both ways.

three weeks in - base and camp

2011-07-05T12:50:00.007+05:00

This is not a typical desert when it comes to the temperature cycle. New Mexico was classic high desert. Hot during the day and cold at night. Temperatures would easily drop 15 degC, sometimes over 20 degC from day to night. Here, it stays warm during the night with very little cooling after the sun goes down. A couple nights ago, it was even warmer a few hours after sunset than it was a couple hours earlier. I am not sure what causes this heat retention but rest assured that I have assigned top people on my payroll to find out. There have also been a few nights worth of windstorms that kick up in the evening and blow all night long. Those seem to lead to hazy sandstorms and reduced visibility, but I can't seem to connect why. Being back in a desert makes me realize how much I disliked the constant humidity of Gabon. Everything there had a sticky feel that I never enjoyed, especially my clothes against my skin.

Also about Gabon, I sometimes referred to the grouping of housing units that were being built for international employees as a "housing compound" which apparently made it sound sinister and well-fortified. I can assure you that it was neither of those things. I'm not even sure how it could be viewed as sinister unless one counts apathetic craftsmanship as a sinister plot designed to undermine the efficient use of interior space and long-term structural stability. As for fortifications, the gate guard would probably wave through anyone who looked like they were pretending to deliver something and people freely walked through the area. However, it was safe place so it wasn't something that concerned me.

Here, I will try not to say compound. Instead I will say "base" and "camp". The "base" is the overall work area including the offices and workshops and storage areas. Of course, now I am wondering if using the word base makes this place sound semi-fortified. Site security is appropriate given the generally safe security situation. This is a small, quiet city and we are on the outskirts by the railroad tracks. There's not much here of immediate value to people either so gate security to keep wanderers out is about all we need. The "camp" is the portion of the base where the expatriate employees live. And again, you might conjure up images of tents and camp fires and perhaps banjos. If you did, you are miserably wrong. If you're clever enough with your google-fu, you can probably find this place on Google Maps and figure out which portion of the overall base that the camp represents. In fact, someone listed this base on foursquare. The mayor has checked in twice!

In addition to the frogs I have mentioned before, there are also cats! I have not put together detailed profiles on each of them, but I have seen at least four different ones, made obvious by them being four different colors. Well, someone could be getting their jollies by painting the same cat a different color each day, but that doesn't seem like a local custom.

This will be an interesting week at work for reasons I will be frustratingly vague about, but it's a variation of the classic temporarily short-handed problem. Suffice to say, I will probably be skimping on the blogging during the week and expect pieces of a light and frivolous nature, or at least more so than normal. Ideas and notes are constantly making their way into drafts, but I may not have time to fully form them for the next week.

fiddling with the layout

2011-07-04T21:08:00.002+05:00

I'll be fiddling with the layout for a little bit. Trying to change a couple items. Feedback welcome, though implementation may be an issue.

Edit: To be clear, this is of course all template stuff provided by blogger. I am only looking to make a few tweaks and must pretend to muck around in the html to find the code I want to add/remove.

not a holiday

2011-07-04T20:19:00.005+05:00

In news that should surprise no one except my twitter alter ego, the 4th of July is not a public holiday here and they do not seem likely to blow up a tiny piece of their country to celebrate its independence. Instead, I get to work from this nice list of public holidays in Turkmenistan to know when the people here are most likely to be partying. Melon Day looks quite tasty, but it seems I will miss it by a few days as I will have rotated back Stateside just a couple days prior.