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2010 Letter to Friends & Family (see also Diane's Letter)


Diane and Bob Andrew have now been living in Dubai just over a year now, and it increasingly feels like home. Bob spent several months on the front-end design phase of a giant sour gas field project for Turkmenistan, then spent five months in that country as their "Technical Issues" coordinator between Petrofac, our client TurkmenGaz, plus Chinese and Korean EPC and Germany-based drilling firms working on different portions of the same South Yoloten field.

In May we celebrated Colin's wedding to Stephania in Maryland, USA, and returned in October for our daughter Meagan's Houston, Texas wedding to John Valenzano. Equally exciting was the birth of our third grandson Jacob - we LOVE being grandparents!

Stephania works for US Coast Guard in DC, Colin is in administration at Everest Institute. Meagan works in corporate ethics compliance for Weatherford, and John teaches graphics design, provides editorial content for Red Orbit and sells good stuff through eBay

Bob also went to Sweden this summer for 40th reunion of his graduating class from engineering school: on an island with great sailing and the evening sky still light at 11 pm. We both got to attend the "Threads of Grace" reunion of Post Green and Community of Celebration folk in Dorset, UK. We posted  '70s & '80s photo albums from Diane's time in the FisherFolk on Diane's website

Bob is now working on a new project that is north of Scotland. For this Shetland Gas Plant project he is Design Integrity technical specialist. This project is for Total E&P UK: processes sweet gas, salty water and waxy condensate from subsea well-heads of the Laggan-Tormore fields.

On the home front, we are increasingly enjoying the Al Areesh club within our neighborhood. Bob has just launched "Al Badia Life!" website as a resource to help connect those who live here. Diane does her morning water-walk in their pool, and has regular Tuesday tables of Scrabble there. Bob joins her for Quiz night; goes to "Pie & Pint" nights when there is a good game on the big-screen TVs.