The Silhouette of a Man

Loo and I were walking back from Common Facilities after inspecting a few Utilities equipment which were on maintenance, when we came across the Rotating Group in the busy midst of putting back the top cover of a gas turbine.

We stopped and watched from afar, as the technicians manhandled the crane into submission, prodding and twiddling the knobs, the load gently swaying.

Imagine how many slaves were whipped to death to get one block of granite on top of the Pyramid, I thought. All in the name of some boy Pharaoh and his beloved cat.

I looked at Loo, wanting to crack a joke about Nefertiti.

But he was busy looking at something else at the far end of the busy activities.

Vivian's face was in some guy's neck. She looked as if she was nibbling his ears. She quickly pulled out, a huge giggly grin ran across her bright red face. Then it was the guy's turn and he sank his face into her neck. But as soon as his face reached her neck, their hard white helmets collided, and their bobbly heads bounced off in opposite direction, like some weird physics experiment. Vivian's head, being smaller, bounced off farther and totally independent of her loose footing. She tumbled sideways like a circus prop, as if she had been hit by a minivan full of clowns.

The couple adjusted their helmets and shared a ridiculously out-of-place laugh.

They were just having a conversation, I thought. An Office Technologist asking the Field Engineer about the manly manly job he was supervising, that was all.

Anybody who has ever been to a noisy plant would know that that is how plant people talk when they are in the field -- cosying up super-close into one's neck to shout from the top of one's lungs into the next person's eardrums, a maniacal howdy-doo.

YOU LOOK HOT IN THAT COVERALL! DID YOU IRON IT OR SOMETHING?

WHAT?!

YOU LOOK HOT!

WHAT?!

Loo kept looking at the two of them, unblinking, his body was cold and stiff with utter disbelief. He stood there, deep in his train of thoughts, oblivious to the high decibel waves of noise and the frenzy of activities that surrounded us both.

I remembered how, during the Oil and Gas Games and Conference a few years ago, in the closing dinner, Loo kept going back and forth, up and about, to the front stage to capture the best pictures of Vivian performing dances with her troupe. How then, after the ceremony had ended, he would go backstage and harass her with his camera, click after click, roll after roll, asking her to pose, to smile, to do something funny for the camera. He kept her alive with his praises, attention and adoration.

She obliged his every whims, happily, like a true friend would.

I grabbed Loo by his shoulder. He snapped out of his deep trance, and looked at me unassumingly, pretending to be fine, trying to hide his troubled state of mind. I could see it in his eyes that he was heartbroken, that something inside had died.

"Life's unfair, dude", I told him, consoling.

"What?"

I smiled and leaned closer, perking his ear.

"C'mon, man, let's go and see that leaking boiler in Module One."

Loo nodded, feigning his interest. He quickly turned around and walked towards the general direction of the boiler, straight into a shifting voluminous cloud of relieved steam, unfolding right before his path, engulfing his entire being. The clumsy lines of his body were smudged into the gray and dull background of concrete, steel piping and twisted metal, slowly dissolving, never looking back.

Following from behind, all that I could see was the silhouette of a dejected man, walking pensively into the unknown, his figure becoming smaller and smaller.

This is a tribute to a guy named Loo, whose passion in life is cracking awkward jokes during serious technical meetings, and that leaking boiler in Module One.