There was a girl this weekend who overheard my english and asked me where I was from.   I started to answer when she jumped in and said,

'You are from Turkey?'
- Yes...Turkey.  It must have been my naturally Mediterranean looking skin tone that gave it away.

Only 8 days until the training course and I found out today it will be an old boss of mine who will be instructing.  Also, today I received the list of fellow participants in the course and it's common practice in our line of work to have a look in the online corporate directory and match the female names with some faces and see what to expect when I arrive.

This may sound like a juvenile thing that only a guy in the oilfield might do but, as a personnel representative here mentioned to me, the same thing was done by a few of the female workers here in the Tyumen office when they got word that a single guy was moving to Russia.  It was comforting to know it wasn't just the guys doing this but then i remembered which picture of me was being accessed for people's first impressions..

How can you resist a mug like that? (sporting the oilfield combover with winged tips for flare)

Thankfully there are two profiles which people can view, the corporate one where I had no choice in the quality of picture and a personal one where I was able to post a photo that was a bit less scary.