Real Life Around the Camp

Camp Life here at the Beaat Project has many interesting features. The rooms we stay in, the cafeteria setting, the ADNOC gas stations, our work camp a few minutes away, and the local workers all have their idiosyncrasies. Everything around is slightly different then what we are used to in Canada.

Our rooms are a quite nice for the most part, we are part of the "Royal Catering Company" camp. The bed is quite big with a fairly hard mattress. With the lack of large blankets for the cool nights, some are forced to buy a room heater to help on the cool nights (even here the nights can get chilly). Laundry is taken care of for us, it just took some prompting to find out the system. Finally after talking to the management I was able to drop off my clothes, and they were returned nicely pressed in a much anticipated laundry bag. The showers are not very well designed, as they leak from not having a proper water containment system, apparently not a priority in these parts. The sand outside the room buildings has a clay-like quality to it, and is very sticky when wet. To point out the disparity around here, the camp next to ours just through the fence looks a bit rundown, with people hanging clothes all over the place, and more garbage laying around than in our camp.
All in all I have good living quarters.

The cafeteria we have in our living quarters is very unique. The appearance is a little drabby, but the food is usually very good, and professionally prepared. The food is a mixture of Western and Middle Eastern themes. The entrees consist of fish,
mutton, beef, and chicken, with the non-meat items consisting of potatoes, pasta, vegetable salona, fresh salads, rice dishes, and spicy Indian food. It is usually artistically prepared, which is very pleasing to the eye and the palate. Desserts are quite tasty with a variety of puddings, tarts, cookies, cakes, and fruit salads.
The cafeteria is probably the best part of the home camp life.

Gas stations around here are extremely clean. The locals go out of their way to shine the floors and keep the shelves looking appealing. The are well stocked and very busy, being little oases on long stretches of highway.

Our work camp a few minutes away is an ambitious, but long drawn-out project. There are many workers walking in each morning from the local camps, and some are bussed in. The plant is quite big, with many interconnected modules tied together with piping. It is quite a walk to get around where you need to go, with the flipside being we get a little exercise that way. People are in a funky Christmas work ethic right now, and there are multiple traditions being celebrated in one location. The plus to all this is we can actually make personal progress towards the ccompany when it is not quite so busy.

The locals are usually quite cheerful to talk to, but the language barriers are not small. It sometimes takes a few minutes just to get one point across, whether talking about life or about work. The ethnicity of middle eastern people is quite rich, of course complimented by North Americans, Philippinos, Australians, Germans, and a few other peoples. If it were not for the diversity of people here, I think it would be much less rewarding.

If anyone has any comments, please feel free.

SS