I arrived at the Red Sea Hotel in Suez around 9:30 p.m. I ordered a late room service dinner and then went to bed. I actually managed to get a full night sleep, except for the prayer call in the morning, of course. It turns out that the Red Sea Hotel is conveniently located right next to a Mosque. And it seems this particular Mosque believes that religious devotion is directly proportional to the decibel level of the prayer call. Thank Alah I remembered my ear plugs! (If you don't believe me . . . watch the movie below. Ignore the video, it's the sound that's key.

PRAYER CALL MOVIE

A driver from the refinery, along with the head engineer, met me around 8 a.m. the next morning. Ok, now it was time to pretend that I knew what the hell I was talking about. This proved to be much easier than I thought, all things considered. It turns out, the Egyptians at this particular refinery (and elsewhere from what I hear) aren�t all that organized. In fact, my impression was that I have no idea how everything doesn�t just blow up in a huge cloud. But miraculously it doesn�t.

These are the main people I worked with, except for one engineer not shown. From left to right Raia, Mohammed, Hanan, and Sahid

When we arrived at the refinery, everyone immediately gathered for a meeting, of which I was the center of attention. I had to tell them what I was doing there, how long I thought it would take, what I needed from them to prepare, etc. If it hadn�t been for Dan and my friend Fabian, I don�t know how I would have gotten through this. I basically just said and did exactly what they had told me and hoped no one would ask too many questions. Unfortunately, someone did. They asked, "Why is UOP testing our catalyst now when it is almost completely dead? This data will not be a good comparison. It doesn�t matter what the new catalyst is, it will of course be better than the old." Mind you this is the quick version. It actually took about 3 hours and a whole bunch of sign language to figure all this out.

It turns out it�s a great question, one that I neglected to ask in all of my briefings with coworkers. They were absolutely right. This was going to be a terrible comparison. It was like collecting three days worth of data to convince someone that a pile of gold is much better than a pile of dirt. Duh!! There was no point to me being there. But, I had this little agreement that they had signed (way back in 1996) that basically told them how it was going to be.

Same people as before with a few extras. I really liked everyone here, except the guy all the way on the right (also named Mohammed). I have no idea who the bearded man is. I guess he heard some yahoo was taking pictures and jumped in.

Because of the fact that Egypt�s work week begins on Sunday and also because of the time change, I was unable to contact people from work to discuss this until after my second day of work. But, I carried on, again as if I knew what I were doing. The goal was to get data for three consecutive days of smooth operation. So I collected data. Blah blah blah . . . I know.

When I finally got in touch with people from work, they all agreed with the customer too. "Boy, what a terrible agreement," they said. "I wonder why they signed it, " they said. As this did not help me very much, I asked what they thought I should do. It was suggested that I try to get the customer to waive the product guarantee, which basically means UOP is released from liability (but remember we didn't really have any anyway since as we all know, gold is better than dirt). Ok, here�s the part of the story where my negotiating skills get tested.

It turns out that this was easier than I thought as well. The engineers all agreed that they should waive this agreement as it did them no good. I told them that I would need written authorization, which they said they would provide the next day. So, I headed back to my hotel very relieved. Especially since the plant had shutdown unexpectedly that day, before the three days of consecutive data had been collected. Things felt good. Order was once again restored. Again, I probably should have been suspicious that something would go wrong.

Proceed to Part III