As part of the software sale to a service company in Bolivia, software training was conducted in Santa Cruz of Bolivia, the 2nd largest city in the country.
Being south of equator, it is summer in Bolivia. Hot and humid, the weather is similar to Houston’s a few months ago. I immediately got used to it, until I was woken up by big noise of birds this morning. You know what? They are parrots singing in the giant tree in front of my room. That was a pleasant surprise. Those birds would be very nice pets in Houston. Although I don’t speak their language, I knew they were very happy.
Our training was on drilling hydraulics (HYDPRO). We had a dozen of students ranging from seasoned mud engineers to newly graduates. The biggest challenge I faced was the communication: they speak more English than I do Spanish. None was sufficient to understand each other. We had a couple of engineers, educated in US, interpreting for everyone.
The teaching went smoother when I started to demo HYDPRO. HYDPRO does have an option to switch to Spanish, which means all captions including those in reports could be in Spanish. But even without using the local language, our students had fairly grip in understanding the program structure and logic flow.
I think their knowledge of drilling fluid, mud engineering and hydraulics helps them tremendously. And I also think we did a good job in interface design so that it breaks language barriers for our users whose native language is not English.
After all, drilling operations are similar across the world. We speak different languages, but we use API standard drill pipe, casing, and handful rheological models to describe fluid behavior. Our drilling software is a tool beyond boundaries, which can be used by drilling engineers in North America, South America, and any other continents.
One student in the training showed me a programmable scientific calculator, using which he had coded a remarkably drilling hydraulics program. Here is the picture of his “Hidraulica de perforacion”.
This is the picture of our HYDPRO training.
My first trip to Bolivia was fruitful. I am sure I will come back for business or vacation: my visa is valid for 5 years with the onetime fee of $125!