Seagulls sound EXACTLY like babies without mothers

It's really disturbing. And not a little disorienting when you're in the middle of a city. You rush around a busy corner because you hear the excruciating wails of what must at least be a cluster of motherless babies tossed in the gutter...and find a lone seagull, who (upon seeing you and realizing you mistook it for an infant) jerks its pointy face out of a McDonald's wrapper only to caterwaul full-on banshee style as if to mock your decent intentions of saving the crying babies...and worst of all, it cocks its head to stare at you with its one, blood-red eye. That great, unblinking eye. What evils lie within?

But lest we forget, Aberdeen is a port city-- sprawling around one of the biggest harbors in the U.K.--the Galveston, Texas of Europe, as far as oil goes. I've only seen the North Sea from afar, as I walk up a hill on my way to campus in the morning (though I've seen more than enough seagulls). But tonight I got a bit closer--and it's because of my curry.

Remember? The curry I was supposed to get yesterday? I ordered me up some for dinner tonight instead. I forget which curry I ordered, but whatever. The main point is that it came with two giant pieces of naan. I mean, they were loaves unto themselves. No way I could eat all that.

Enter Allan.

Allan, who has two kids my age, has commuted up to Aberdeen from N. England to work as a pipe engineer for the oil drilling companies going on three years now. Monday through Thursday night he stays here at Arkaig guest house, then goes home for the weekend. Allan tells me this is not uncommon-- he estimates ~60% of his coworkers also commute to Aberdeen. You see, while the rest of the world suffers from economic turmoil, cities with ports that service a majority of the North Sea's oil and gas fields manage to do quite well.

Allan came in from work while I was tearing through a loaded plate of curry of indiscriminate flavor (there was some cumin involved, I believe), complaining of his meager frozen dinner. So I forced him to eat one of my face-sized pieces of naan. He accepted, and we got to chatting over our respective dinners. I mentioned that although Guido and Jenny had already taken me on a walking tour of Old Aberdeen, I hadn't yet seen the harbor or downtown.

"Well I'll show you round a bit, then! Just let me get my sneakers on."

He wolfed down the rest of his potatoes, shoved the remainder of the face-sized naan into his...face, and we were off in his light blue Volvo V50.

The first thing I do in his car is go through all the stuff in it. You know-- the toys on the dash, the stuff in the glove box, the cds on the floor. Allan loves the blues. He's working through some Stevie Ray Vaughan at the moment; he's seen B.B. King 3 times, he says, including once with Eric Clapton.

He gives me a tour of downtown Aberdeen-- it all looks the same: granite, granite granite. A gray city to match Scotland's gray skies. Although, ironically, it isn't often cloudy here (see prior post). It's like the rest of Scotland got upset about that and built the whole city of Aberdeen using cloud-colored bricks, out of spite.

Allan's tour was selective, consisting mostly of pubs, bars, and fish & chips places. At some point I'll get up the courage to go out on the town. Maybe I'll wait to meet some friends first, though. I met a guy in the IT building yesterday; he smiled a lot and was about my age. Maybe he has friends he can share.

I digress; back to the tour. The best part was the harbor. It's no Sydney Harbor, of course (how could it be?) but it was full of massive oil tankers and rig supply ships, and (haha!) not many seagulls! (They've all gone into town to eat McDonalds wrappers and scream at people, I guess). I barraged Allan with little-kid questions about the sorts of people who work on rigs, the most dangerous part of it, how terrifying it must be to be in the middle of the North Sea on a platform during volatile storms, what the food is like.

I asked him about the craziest thing he'd experienced on a rig. He said a while back a young woman was working for him managing pipes (or whatever it is they do) who started having long-distance boy trouble. As Allan says, she "went off"--went mad, and decided to tell the crew of over 500 people that she'd put a bomb on the rig. Way to cope, lady.

Massive evacuation.

"There we were, Sunday mornin, all sittin in boats afloat from the rig. The sky was black with choppers," Allan explained. "Made huge news. It was the biggest peacetime evacuation since Dunkirk."

Dunkirk wasn't exactly "peacetime", but ok-- point taken: it was a huge stinking deal. And all because of a slighted girlfriend. Hell hath no fury like a lass's scorn?

I also learned that most rigs are named after ex-girlfriends. Allan is currently onshore- engineering for "Janice".

All the while Allan told me these things, I responded with emphatic "Ooos" and "FAScinating!" and "WOW!" and "How adVENturous!" I'm hoping, you see, that Allan will get the hint and take me for a ride-along on a chopper out to a rig ...though I'm not exactly sure they do ride-alongs in this line of work. Even if they did, I don't think Allan was, shall we say, "pickin up what I's layin down". I'll keep working at it until I get on board one of those puppies. In the meantime, I'll amuse myself by thinking up puns to describe my situation (rigging the situation, trying not to be crude, it'd be a gas, etc. etc.)

That's it for now. Though one more thing: Allan said if I wanted to see Scotland's mountains, I *had* to visit the Isle of Skye. This is my new project--I'll keep you posted.

(I mean, can you even believe that's a photograph!?!?!)