It was the summer of 1964. Smith and I were 17, working as apprentice divers for the freshly established Al Gossaibi Diving Services, the brain child of the legendary Dee McVey. Dee had been the lead diver and manager of undersea operations for all of Bechtel’s offshore projects since the mid-fifties.
Saudi Arabia has four times as many species of birds per square mile of territory as does the United States. Whenever I point this out to a fellow American, they refuse to believe me. They simply can’t imagine that a desert country like the Kingdom could possibly match the USA...
Shaikh Amin, retired chief photographer of Aramco, recently traveled to Lahore, Pakistan where he visited friends he has known since his Aramco days. In this photo, Shaikh Amin visits with Anwar and Mahara Kamal.
In May of this year, AXP published an article, “A Street Called Straight,” featuring Bert Seal and his amazing corpus of work dating from his years working as a photographer for Aramco. Bert snapped a treasure trove of priceless images documenting the history of the company, the country, and the people of Arabia.
Shaikh Amin, retired chief photographer of Aramco, recently traveled to Lahore, Pakistan where he visited friends he has known since his Aramco days. In this photo, Shaikh Amin joins the family of the late Syed Yousaf Shah whose son, Engr. Naushad Yousaf Shah stands on the right.
Nearly half a century ago—in its March/April 1969 edition, to be exact—Saudi Aramco World published an article titled “Gaily Go the Lorries.” The piece was written by Fuad Rayess, General Supervisor at the time of the Arabic Press and Publications Division of Aramco’s Public Relations Department.
May 1st, 1939, Saudi Arabia shipped its first tanker load of crude oil to join the ranks of oil exporting nations. Aside from the initial discovery of oil at Dammam #7, this was the most historic moment in the company’s history. Nine weeks later, seventy five years ago today, disaster struck and changed the company forever.
Conversations with friends can be infinitely varied—filled with tangential remarks, thoughtful asides, and random non-sequiturs and often producing surprising results. Starting from Point A over here, they’ve been known to jump quickly to Point B over there, and thence move on...
Separate from its tempestuous politics, the U.K. has been getting a lot of positive attention of late for other, more upbeat reasons. Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave for the past month, you’re likely already aware that the 2018 FIFA World Cup is underway in Russia.
Story-telling comes in many forms, written and oral, prose and poetry, fact and fiction. There are fables like “The Tortoise and the Hare” and folktales like “The Pied Piper.” There are ghost stories like “Ali the Cairene and the Haunted House in Baghdad” and fairy tales like “Cinderella.”
Saudi Arabia is a special place. The Kingdom owes a major component of its unique identity to the distinctive geological history of the region—on land and sea. The Arabian Peninsula sits squarely between two fabled bodies of water with long and colorful histories: the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea.
Baby boomers in the U.S. will remember this. Beginning in 1956 on CBS, a popular panel game show called “To Tell The Truth” ran for 12 years on American television. The show featured four panelists who were tasked with trying to figure out which of three guests...
Ali and Elizabeth Badawi are proud to announce the marriage of their daughter, Amira (DH 1991) to Brian Voorhees. The couple live and work in Washington, DC.
Think about it, fellow Aramco ExPats. How many times, after someone learns you once lived and worked in Saudi Arabia, have you found yourself in the position of having to correct them after they launched into a well-intentioned but misguided commentary on the Kingdom...
This coming Sunday, being the third Sunday in June, will be celebrated as Father’s Day in 60 countries around the world. Last year, AXP marked Father’s Day 2017 by highlighting 11 songs written about fathers, starting with Paul Peterson’s mushy-but-heartfelt 1964 hit, “My Dad”...
Tuesday, September 18, is tour day and the Austin Hafla 2018 committee is offering two choices. The Austin Duck Adventures is an overview tour of downtown Austin. The LBJ Presidential Library and Texas State Capital tour offers an in-depth visit to two of Austin’s most important landmarks.
Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority (GEA) announced that it will organize 400 events across 23 cities on the occasion of Eid Al-Fitr, which is set for the end of the week.
Often when I sit down at my computer to write about one subject or another for AXP, I venture into the realm of my personal history to inflict upon readers memories from my past I believe they might find interesting. Such was the case last week with the article on shawarmas...
Over 38 years ago, back in 1980, a fantastic group of Aramcons were hired and many of them resided in the old Abqaiq Aramco Construction Camp (ACC) which was located just outside the Abqaiq Main Camp boundary. In those days, Aramco Management decided that these types of camps should be divided by nationality and each section had different dining halls so that foods could be prepared to suit their native tastes.
Back in April 2011, stuck in a monumental traffic jam on Interstate 5 just north of Seattle, I switched on the radio and hit the Seek button, hoping to find a station with an up-to-date traffic report. “Maybe they’ll recommend a way around this mess,”