No 152: My urine is green. That can’t be good.

This week I have been in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a city where size matters. They have the biggest flag pole in the world (170m), the tallest water fountain in the world (260m) and are currently constructing the tallest building in the world, Jeddah Towers. At 1km high Jeddah Towers will be just 49cm taller than the current tallest building in the world (the Burj Khalifa in Dubai). If you are going to spend $5bn then you really don’t want to be ‘the second tallest’ so those extra few centimetres truly matter. We drove past the construction site (see photo below). It doesn’t look overly impressive at first glance but look closely and you get a sense of the scale; those tiny objects on the side of the picture are massive cranes. See also attached the artists impression of the final structure. Oh yes indeed. Jeddah is a city where size matters.

Towers in Aug 2016                                            Artists Impression of final Towers

We are about 10 miles from Mecca and, as luck would have it, our trip coincided with the Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage. It was suggested that we could perhaps visit the holy site disguised in a burka. We sensibly rejected this offer on cultural sensitivity grounds. Also my colleague, Dutchman Erik Driessen, is 7 foot tall and likely to attract attention. Whilst abandoning him to explain himself to the Saudi authorities would be mildly amusing it would have created unpleasant amounts of paperwork.

If you head 60km south of Jeddah into the desert you will come to an Industrial Zone. Between here and the Yemen border is 500 miles of hot, unforgiving desert. This is where we have spent the week, undertaking a technical audit of, yes you guessed it, the biggest soft drinks facility in the world. It is run by a fantastically dedicated team from Sibco, one of the largest Pepsi franchisees in the world, and it is, quite simply, staggeringly enormous. The $0.5bn+ plant is going through commissioning but when fully operational will consume over 500,000,000 litres of water every hour. A giant sized lorry packed with 7Up, Pepsi, and all the other delicious Pepsi brands will leave the site every 4 minutes (there is a taxi-rank type car park for 100 such lorries). The sheer scale of it is awe-inspiring. It knocks spots off the big flagpole, bigger fountain and biggest building as a tourist attraction.

It is however ridiculously hot. Step outside the air conditioned office and, literally within seconds, you are pouring with sweat. After just 3 minutes you are soaked to the skin in your own perspiration. Our days have involved spending a couple of blisteringly hot hours on-site, returning to the safety of our temporary office to write up our notes/re-hydrate/dry. We then repeat this until the day ends.  Shirts dry quite quickly but once your underpants are soaked through they tend to stay wet all day long. Having constantly wet nether-regions is a special feeling I have not encountered for perhaps 45 years.

Some water issues are common the world over (leakage, energy control, sludge). Some are region specific (unusually high manganese levels in the Red Sea feed water, climatic conditions which cause rapid corrosion of all metal components). Everyone we have met, from the local desalination operators Sawaco to all Sibco staff/subcontractors has welcomed us and is working tirelessly to get the facility up and running on time. After all, there are 28 million thirsty Saudi’s out there and they need their Pepsi.

Above the urinals is a little sign with colour chart for you to compare with your urine. It ranges from light yellow (‘good’) to dark yellow (‘drink more’) to green (‘drink more now’) to red (‘Something is seriously wrong. Find a hospital and find a psychiatrist’). No matter how much I drink I can’t seem to shift from light green. I feel (and no doubt look) like a shrivelled prune. Yet our main client contact, Duncan Munro, has been here almost 3 years and looks suspiciously younger than he did when he worked in London for Fullers Brewery.

Perhaps it’s a Soft drink vs Beer thing? Perhaps it is due to the sunshine? I hope not, either way I am in trouble. Next week I am on holiday in Southwold, UK. I intend to spend the week enjoying the balmy 20 degree C temperatures, sitting on the painful gravel beach next to the deliciously grey and cold North Sea drinking copious amount of the local Adnams ale. It is a classic Englishman’s holiday. I might not end the week looking any younger but my urine will at least be back to normal.

These Notes, and previous editions, can be found at http://notesfrompiers.blogspot.co.uk/