Memories are a funny thing. Incidents hidden somewhere in the grey matter jump out all of a sudden and you cant help but have a smile on the face. Today was one such instance. Was chatting with a friend on the subject of IP addresses getting depleted today. The talk moved to the concept of infinity then to the subject of calculus, onwards to the oil reserves in the world getting depleted in the next 40 years (?) to the uncoventional gas sources to coal bed methane to the debate of petroleum vs mining engineering (I know pretty huge variety but it had been a very logical flow of thoughts and ideas).
Now the last point reminded me of my final year engineering days. In one of the interviews I was asked how a post-petroleum engineering life is better than a post-mining engineering life. Now like a true petroleum engineer me gave the following reasons.
- better working conditions
- better locations
- higher salaries
- technology & analysis (or something like that)
My interviewers (fellow petroleum engineers) were obviously impressed enough to give me the job. And here is what I got in the job.
- Working in hot, humid conditions
- Located some place which was not exactly traceable on most maps
- A stipend as per PSU rates
- Technology usage - I remember climbing up on X-Mas trees (oil wells not the Christmas ones) with a pressure gauge to measure the flowing pressures. (Don't want to get any technical here, so no more details but it was dirty work to say the least)
Those days are now far behind me but do provide a few stories. Cant imagine the situation could have been any more ironical.
P.S. Readers are requested not to not use this post as any comparison index between the two streams.
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