In order to help me in the part of my job which involves financing their shipping business, I am in Singapore to learn about shipping. The family has a large office here which operates crude oil tankers, oil product (e.g. gasoline) carriers and offshore oil storage terminals, which sit on top of oil wells in the ocean, store the produced oil and distribute it to tankers for shipment.
Oh yeah, that's right, I am also learning to be a pirate. Just kidding. I did get to attend our office holiday party here last Friday, which is something called a "D&D" that does *not* involve dice. D & D standing in this case for Dinner and Dance, but which also might as well stand for Dressup and Drink or Dinner and Drawing. Apparently in Singapore, they have dress-up parties for their office holiday parties. At my company's party, there were 300 people in pirate/colonial costume, there was a Chinese banquet, there was an obnoxious MC, and of course there was a raffle of 50 expensive prizes to induce the employees to stay to the end.
I left early.
So, anyhow, my training. I am spending four weeks here learning how to operate and charter ships. So far this includes spending a lot of time with managers and operators in the office, learning the finer points of how to lease out a ship for a voyage, how to buy fuel for a ship and how to plan and monitor a voyage. I have also been lucky enough to head out to sea and visit a tanker which carries 500,000 barrels (100,000 metric tons) of oil, a smaller tanker which carries 40,000 metric tons of gasoline or jet fuel and a container ship which carries 3,400 40-foot-long containers. Unfortunately I do not yet have any pictures of all this action.
I have to go. Someone is playing a gamalan outside my window.
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