So what is February like in Houston? I have only two words for you: camellias and strawberries. Yes, these are mine. Planted them last year because I did not like all the wasted space around the rose bushes. The black plastic-looking stuff is an attempt to spend this summer doing something else than pulling weeds. I invested about 40 dollars and two days of work, we will see how successful it is. The strawberries are super. They taste a little like wild strawberries that we used to pick by the road to Jasper. Unfortunately we are not the only ones appreciating them. Something else is eating parts of the berries, my guess is slugs. They always get to them before I do. Luckily they never finish what they start and I am not squeamish. In other news, we will not be moving. The field I am working on is currently being operated by a consortium of who is who in international petroleum. As the appraisal of the field continues everybody is spending serious money and a decision has been made to change to a single operator - one of the partners. XOM was a serious candidate, but if successful, our project would have moved to Europe. Nothing wrong with that, but we just finished unpacking from our last move. As it turned out the Italian company Agip was chosen to run things and that means that our life will continue as before. We are always grateful for little miracles. Well, I celebrated one year anniversary of my move to Houston. It seems fitting to do some sort of retrospective. Even though Houston does not have a reputation for being unique it actually is, in its own way. How? Simple: zoning. That is there is no zoning in Houston. If you have not lived in North America, zoning may be an alien concept. It is basically a set of rules designed to assure quality of life and property values by deciding what can be built where. For example, you cannot build a fat rendering plant in an area zoned for residential housing. Basically a good idea, but like many good ideas it can be taken too far. In many cities it has been taken too far and the end result are antiseptic neighborhoods. Well, Houston is different. Rather than try to explain it I put together a little visual essay. Simply click on this picture and it will fill your screen. It is map of our neighborhood. The red circle is one kilometer in radius and the green one is one mile. Just so you have a little sense of scale. The green dots indicate locations of the pictures around the map. If you click on the pictures they will enlarge. Use your back button to get back to the map. Just in case you get the impression we live in the country, we actually live in one of the more developed parts of Houston. One of the biggest shopping streets in town is just to the north of us. And yes, somebody is drilling for gas just a mile away from the house. And there is a prince living next to a pauper (unless he owns all the land around him and is just an eccentric). This is just a counter.
In other news, we will not be moving. The field I am working on is currently being operated by a consortium of who is who in international petroleum. As the appraisal of the field continues everybody is spending serious money and a decision has been made to change to a single operator - one of the partners. XOM was a serious candidate, but if successful, our project would have moved to Europe. Nothing wrong with that, but we just finished unpacking from our last move. As it turned out the Italian company Agip was chosen to run things and that means that our life will continue as before. We are always grateful for little miracles.
Well, I celebrated one year anniversary of my move to Houston. It seems fitting to do some sort of retrospective. Even though Houston does not have a reputation for being unique it actually is, in its own way. How? Simple: zoning. That is there is no zoning in Houston. If you have not lived in North America, zoning may be an alien concept. It is basically a set of rules designed to assure quality of life and property values by deciding what can be built where. For example, you cannot build a fat rendering plant in an area zoned for residential housing. Basically a good idea, but like many good ideas it can be taken too far. In many cities it has been taken too far and the end result are antiseptic neighborhoods.
Well, Houston is different. Rather than try to explain it I put together a little visual essay. Simply click on this picture and it will fill your screen. It is map of our neighborhood. The red circle is one kilometer in radius and the green one is one mile. Just so you have a little sense of scale. The green dots indicate locations of the pictures around the map. If you click on the pictures they will enlarge. Use your back button to get back to the map. Just in case you get the impression we live in the country, we actually live in one of the more developed parts of Houston. One of the biggest shopping streets in town is just to the north of us. And yes, somebody is drilling for gas just a mile away from the house. And there is a prince living next to a pauper (unless he owns all the land around him and is just an eccentric).
This is just a counter.