The Kristen Stewart heist movie gave me a thirst for adventure – I got it as an engineer at a remote gas station | Kristen Stewart

TThroughout my teenage years, my family followed a Friday tradition that, today, makes perfect sense. the past. Every week after dinner, my mom, brother and I would walk 20 minutes through the quiet streets to a fun place that used to be a video store. If we had good behavior, the most fun: renting the movie we want.

My mother doesn’t usually object to our choices, so we looked at the wild group; but it was an unassuming family comedy that featured child actors Kristen Stewart and Corbin Bleu from High School Musical that would change my life forever.

Released in 2004, Catch That Kid tells the story of three kids who rob a bank to pay for Stewart’s father’s expensive surgery. I often describe the film as “Italian work, but for young people”. There are all kinds of shenanigans but, most importantly, the heist is successful and the trio manages to escape on go-karts.

It was the part of the film — not the love story Stewart tells both boys to help them, not the love of riding that caused his father’s injury in the first place — that grabbed my attention. I remember the moment vividly: between my distraught brother and exhausted mother on the sofa, in awe of Stewart and his two loving boys screaming at the speed machines, surrounded by piles of cash. I want to do that, I thought. More than anything else in the world, I wanted to drive fast.

With the self-importance of a 13-year-old who spoke about her whole life, I told my mother: “I’m going to be the first black, female, Muslim Formula One driver. This was pre-Lewis Hamilton, of course. “Okay,” she replied. “When you go to wash the dishes …” My parents were sure this was the part. But somehow, it wasn’t. I read every book about cars in the local library, I put up posters for the 1963 Corvette Sting. Rays and McLaren F1 on my walls.

We didn’t have the money for me to be a real driver, so I made a design. At university I studied mechanical engineering, raced in the uni race car team and graduated from college. I was selected to do a master’s degree in motorsport at a university that plays in the top league. Life in F1 was exciting. It was all performances to go!

After all, I had failed to accomplish what Stewart had mastered – walking away from the site with a lot of money. Formula One is not a small bank. They banned me because I didn’t have the money to do unpaid work for a few months. The tuition fee, including board, was A$50K. Instead of robbing a bank, what can an engineering girl do?

That’s when I dug up an email from someone I met at a job fair in my early years of engineering. I was attracted at that time by the job he was advertising: travel; the idea of ​​taking a helicopter to work; and the pay wasn’t cheap, either. When asked, the manager looked nervous. “You know, we don’t have any other professional women. Are you going to be okay?” I felt embarrassed, with the arrogance of a 20-year-old girl who didn’t know what she was getting into: “I’ll be fine!” How difficult would it be to work on oil rigs?

Working on the “patch”, as those in the know call the gas station, is not for the faint of heart. Hours are required, and in the positions I’ve held – measure and drill (MWD) technician, then drilling engineer – you’re on call, you’re expected to drop everything when you need to and get paid to work as long as the job requires.

I worked on land, in the Australian desert, and on the coast, in the Indian Ocean. A hiatus – the length of time you are away from home – can range from a few weeks to a few months. The shift was for 12 hours, but if you’re on the well from hell, as I am sometimes, you have to solve problems for up to 20 hours at a time; why worry about something as useless as sleep when a useless connector costs a million dollars a day to run, and everyone expects you to solve the problem?

But there was something that drew me back. The thrill of the helicopter ride to the tower, the technical challenges of hitting a six-and-a-half-inch fine a thousand feet below the ground, the isolation and stress and countless dangers that were part of everyday life. For four years or so, the journey was intoxicating.

But it didn’t last forever, and eventually I left the oil industry to become a writer. However, I will always be grateful to Stewart and his guys for introducing me to a world I would never have discovered otherwise. And while I may not have been on a race track, I still love being behind the wheel.