Aramco Brat, Doug Grant, hosted a cocktail and dinner gala at the waterfront restaurant, Shrimpers Bar and Grill, in Port Salerno, Florida on April 20th. Nine Brats and one honorary Brat were in attendance.
The word transience often brings up ambivalent feelings for me. On one hand, while it is a word that has defined much of my life, and while it’s enthralling to get sucked into the excitement of change, the word transience is at its best bittersweet. When life feels transient, it’s impossible to create stability and predictability.
Ali Al-Baluchi was born in the Arabian Peninsula soon after the unification of the Saudi kingdom. Against the backdrop of a conservative society confronting a rapidly increasing pace of modernization, he has witnessed and participated in decades of great social and economic change.
A poem by Nimah Ismail Nawwab. Losing oneself...Can this ever happen...‘How can we lose ourselves?’ one asks.
Hooriya Naushad Shah, daughter of Engr. Syed Naushad Shah, celebrated her 10th birthday on April 5th. Hooriya is the granddaughter of Syed Yousaf Shah, Aramco Badge ID 71533.
This article is inspired by a quote from Brian Tracy, "The greatest joys of life are happy memories. Your job is to create as many of them as possible.” and on an announcement by the Dhahran Inspection Department to submit abstracts for the “Inspection Department Technical Exchange Meeting and Exhibition 2005.”
This photo, taken in 1977, is of the Aramco Exploration Camp known as G3 and located deep in the Rub Al Khali. Every five or six weeks the newest (most junior) Aramco pilots were assigned to the G3 camp for a week at a time to fly oil exploration crews (usually four to six men) to their remote sites in the Aramco Twin Otter which was kept at the G3 base. This was actually pretty good duty.
Thank you, Ann Berry, for sending AXP this beautiful, nostalgic photo of UK Secretaries. Ann Berry worked in Office Services for 24 years, from 1978 to her retirement on 1 April 2002. The photo is of her friends at her leaving party. The party included 34 secretaries who had clocked over 700 years working for Aramco.
Prior to arriving in Arabia I had a conversation with a friend already in Kingdom about the possibility of us getting a pet. We understood it might take a few months before our large shipment from the US arrived with our personal belongings.
No one knows for certain when the use of children's Ramadan lanterns began, but it is a very old Egyptian tradition. Indeed, lanterns and lamps of various kinds, of many hues and degrees of brightness, and even both real and imaginary, have always been special to Egypt.
I took the 'then' photo of Al Khobar in 1955 while working as a PR photographer for Aramco. The 'now' photo is of my grandson, Sam Field, taken in 2020.
I find it refreshing that photography is becoming an accepted part of modern Saudi society. The first “Jeddah Photo 2022” exhibition at Athr Gallery (organized by the Saudi Art Council and supported by the Ministry of Culture’s Museums Commission) will showcase a variety of images by Saudi and international photographers, including experimental work and contemporary photos.
Having just graduated from a small Ohio university in 1951, three sorority sisters embarked on a memorable trans-Atlantic journey that would shape their lives. In this photo essay, Mark Lowey shares the experiences and photos from a family photo album that has collected dust for more than half a century. The photos, taken by Mark’s mother, Suzanne “Susie” Olin (later Lowey), reveal memories from a bygone post-WWII era.
Dear Friends of Laurene, I have some exciting news. Starting June 1, 2022, the number of scholarships available will increase from five to seven! My only request is for you to help me find qualified candidates for these scholarships and encourage them to apply.
Just down the road outside Dhahran’s Main Gate in the 1950s and 60s was an area called Saudi Camp. In one of the shops was an old, blind Saudi cobbler who made sandals from camel hide and tire treads. He would trace your foot on a piece of cardboard and tell you to come back the next day to pick up your custom-made sandals.
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak with Carina Rourke Burns, an American published author and expatriate who spent seven years of her life growing up in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, before relocating to Paris in 1975.
Batten down the hatches! It was always a happy yet tense time for Aramco when the high school and college dependents returned for Christmas and summer vacations. The company worked hard to keep them entertained (Tri-D dances, dhow trips, etc.)
As Dr. Seuss might say, “Oh the places we’ll go!” Just see what awaits us on our 2022 Hafla cruise. . . Our cruise experience is much more than that photo op as we eagerly embark on the Celebrity Summit. We begin and end our Hafla in ‘The Magic City, as Miami is nicknamed, and then two exciting Caribbean destinations await our arrival.
Not quite 4,000 days before the Cairo crash, I could be found in Glenshaw, a suburb outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was the day after Christmas, 1955. My father had joined giant Aramco (the Arabian American Oil Company) thirteen months before, and we would soon be with him in KSA, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Back in 2015, the Dhahran Cricket Association (DCA) explored another out-of-kingdom destination on a 5-day tour of Morocco. See photos from the excursion enjoyed by 60 DCA members and family recounted here by Farooq Khan.