Throughout my early teen\u00a0years, my family followed a regular Friday routine that, today, feels distinctly ancient. Every week after\u00a0dinner, my mother, brother and I would dawdle for 20 minutes down quiet suburban streets to\u00a0the entertainment haven that was thevideo rental store. If we had been well behaved, the ultimate treat: free rein to rent a film of our choice.<\/p>\n
My mum rarely vetoed our selection, so we watched a wild range; but it was an unassuming family comedy starring child actors Kristen Stewart<\/a> and High School Musical\u2019s Corbin Bleu that would change my life\u00a0for ever.<\/p>\n Released in 2004, Catch That Kid tells the story of three kids who rob a\u00a0bank to pay for Stewart\u2019s father\u2019s expensive surgery. I often describe the film as \u201cThe Italian job, but for preteens\u201d. There are all manner of shenanigans but, most importantly, the heist is successful and the trio escape on go-karts.<\/p>\n It was this element of the film \u2013 not the duplicitous declarations of love Stewart makes to both boys to convince them to help, not the love of climbing that caused her father\u2019s injuries in the first place \u2013 that really caught my eye. I\u00a0remember the moment vividly: sandwiched between\u00a0my distractible brother and bored mother on the couch, in awe at Stewart and her two loverboys screaming away in fast little machines, surrounded by piles of money. I want to do that, I thought. More than anything else in the world, I wanted to drive fast.<\/p>\n With all the self-importance of a\u00a013-year-old making a declaration about the rest of their life, I told my mum: \u201cI\u00a0am going to become the first black, female, Muslim Formula One driver.\u201d This was pre-Lewis Hamilton, of course. \u201cOK,\u201d she replied. \u201cAfter you go wash the dishes \u2026\u201d My parents were certain that this was a phase. But somehow, it wasn\u2019t. I read every single book about cars in the local library, I\u00a0stuck posters up of 1963 Corvette Sting Rays and McLaren F1s on my walls.<\/p>\n double quotation markI\u2019d been attracted by the\u00a0adventure; the idea of taking a helicopter to work; and the paycheck wasn\u2019t shabby, either<\/p>\n We didn\u2019t have the money for me to be an actual driver, so I made the pivot into design. At university I studied mechanical engineering, running the uni race-car team and graduating with first-class honours. I was selected for an exclusive master\u2019s in motorsport at a university that fed straight into the elite teams. A life in F1 was beckoning. It was all systems go!<\/p>\n Except, I had failed to achieve what Stewart had so elegantly accomplished \u2013 leaving the scene with a lot of money. Formula One is not for the small bank-accounted. An offer of work experience at Mercedes F1 had to be turned down because I didn\u2019t have the funds to cover months of unpaid work. The fees for the course, plus board, was A$50K. In lieu of robbing a bank, what\u2019s an engineering girly to do?<\/p>\n It was then that I dug out the email address of a man I\u2019d met at a careers fair in my early years of engineering. I\u2019d been attracted at the time by the\u00a0profession he was advertising: the\u00a0adventure; the idea of taking a helicopter to work; and the paycheck wasn\u2019t shabby, either. In the interview, the manager seemed nervous. \u201cYou know, we don\u2019t have any other women field specialists. Are you going to be OK?\u201d I shrugged, with the arrogance of\u00a0a 20-year-old who had no idea what she was getting into: \u201cI\u2019ll be fine!\u201d How hard could working on the oil rigs be?<\/p>\n Working on the \u201cpatch\u201d, as those in the know refer to the oilfield, is not for the fainthearted. The hours are demanding, and in the roles I was in \u2013 a measurement while drilling (MWD) specialist, then drilling engineer \u2013 you are on call, expected to drop everything when you\u2019re needed and paid to work for as long as the job requires.<\/p>\n I worked both onshore, in the Australian desert, and offshore, in the Indian Ocean. Hitches \u2013 the length of time you\u2019re away from home \u2013 could range from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. Shifts were typically 12 hours, but if you\u2019re on a well from hell, as I sometimes was, you\u2019re up and problem solving for up to 20 hours at a\u00a0time; why worry about something as insignificant as sleep when an idling rig costs a million dollars a day to run, and everyone is waiting on you to solve the problem holding operations up?<\/p>\n But there was something that kept drawing me back. The thrill of a helicopter out to the platform, the technical challenge of hitting a six-and-a-half-inch target thousands of feet underground, the isolation and the pressures and the unfathomable dangers that were part of the day to day. For four or so years, the adventure was intoxicating.<\/p>\n But it was not to last for ever, and I\u00a0would eventually leave oil rigs for a\u00a0career as a writer. Still, I will always be\u00a0grateful to Stewart and her boys for introducing me to a world that I would never have discovered any other way. And while I may never have made it on\u00a0to the racetrack, I certainly still love\u00a0being behind the wheel.<\/p>\n Share your cultural awakenings<\/p>\n Share your experiences<\/p>\n You can tell us how a cultural moment has prompted you to make a major life change by filling in the form below or emailing us on\u00a0cultural.awakening@theguardian.com.<\/p>\n Your responses, which can be anonymous, are secure as the form is encrypted and only the Guardian has access to your contributions. We will only use the data you provide us for the purpose of the feature and we will delete any personal data when we no longer require it for this purpose. For alternative ways to get in touch securely please see our tips guide<\/a>.Show more<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Throughout my early teen\u00a0years, my family followed a regular Friday routine that, today, feels distinctly ancient. Every week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":["post-689083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}