You can take the boy out of the desert . . .

One of the most interesting things to us that we've noticed recently in this part of the world is how attached many Arabs are to their nomadic roots. During our trip to Jordan--from which I hope to get pictures posted soon--we saw many people living as their ancestors did for centuries, or even millennia. OK, most of the tents had a pickup truck or SUV parked outside, and I imagine that many of the tent-dwellers have mobile phones, but otherwise life for many of these people hasn't changed much. Here is a Bedouin tent we saw in the desert at Wadi Rum.













Here in Qatar, the locals are wealthy enough that I don't think there are many people (if any) left who live in tents. However, they still have a very strong attachment to outdoor living--on the weekends, the Qataris clog the roads in their Land Cruisers to head out to their desert campsites. Admittedly, the tents these days have luxuries the Qataris' ancestors wouldn't have dreamed of, such as diesel generators powering everything from window A/C units to TV sets, not to mention porta-potties.

What we have found the most amusing is the prevalence of tents in town right next to houses. That way the local men (sorry, but I'm guessing this is a guy thing) can hang out in the house for a nice meal prepared by the hired help, and then retire to the tent for an evening of shisha and coffee.

Party on, Wayne

Living in a country where most commerce happens in English, but where native English speakers make up a tiny fraction of the population, linguistic mishaps are bound to happen. Sometimes they just make you laugh and scratch your head, like the store whose sign says "Al Istliqal for Chicken Sell." Often, though, there's a double entendre that would be lost on non-native English speakers, and sometimes even those require knowledge of a specific cultural reference to understand.

The below truck is probably not the least bit funny to most of the locals, and even to native English speakers unfamiliar with the "Wayne's World" Saturday Night Live skits and subsequent movies, it probably won't mean anything. However, if you've seen any of the skits and/or movies, you will appreciate this.

Steve of Arabia?

Have we really "gone local"? Considering that I know maybe 10-15 words of Arabic after living here for over a year, and that even Ella is a long way from fluency although she is studying hard and knows much more Arabic than I do, I wouldn't think that anyone could mistake us for Arabs. However, we've had a couple of experiences in the last 24 hours that have made me scratch my head.

Last night we needed to do some grocery shopping for our excursion to the beach and desert today and wanted to combine our trip to the local supermarket with dinner in the same shopping mall. By way of background, our nearest shopping mall has exactly three (oops, make that four*) sit-down restaurants. The first one is Pizza Express, a branch of the UK chain but unfortunately not nearly as good as its sister restaurants in London or even the location across town in Doha. The second (I don't recall its name) is located inside The One, a modern furniture store. We also think that sounds bizarre, but the food is actually quite good (international, with several strong North African dishes); unfortunately Morgan hasn't found anything on the menu she likes since they discontinued the excellent lentil soup they were serving a few months ago. The last one, which is usually our choice by default when we need to combine dinner out with shopping, is none other than T.G.I. Friday's. Anyway, last night we were welcomed back by the always-friendly Filipina hostess, who now recognizes us and always greets Morgan in the same, uniquely Filipino, way: "Hi, baby." We were immediately seated in a comfortable booth and given our menus, but I noticed there was something different right away--the name and logo were on the back. Initially puzzled, I flipped through back to front and saw that, sure enough, we had all been given Arabic menus. Even though we kept them open whenever the server came back, he never noticed and we pretended nothing was amiss since the names of the dishes are in English; otherwise there could be a lot of confusion since there's no guarantee that one of the Filipino servers would understand an order in English. Of course, we pretty much have the menus memorized at this point, so just seeing the pictures as a refresher probably would been good enough.

Tonight's experience was stranger and, I think, funnier. I was driving down a dark side street to pick up Morgan from gymnastics when I saw a young Arab man in traditional garb gesticulating wildly by the side of the road. (In case you're wondering, no, I normally would not stop under those circumstances in the States, but since violent crime is virtually non-existent here I saw no reason not to.) When I stopped the car and put down the passenger's window, the gentleman instantly greeted me with "salaam alaykum" (literally "peace be upon you," but used in the way Americans would use "hello"). I instinctively responded with "alaykum salaam" (the standard reply) and when he asked "kaif halak" ("how are you") I answered with "zain" ("fine"). It wasn't entirely surprising that the guy greeted me in Arabic--he probably saw my Land Cruiser, the preferred vehicle of locals, and assumed I was an Arab. However, since he could see me at this point, wearing a Gap ball cap, t-shirt, and shorts, and with my fair Scots-Irish complexion, I expected that we would now have the inevitable switch to English. Instead, the gentleman rattled off something that I could not possibly understand and I confessed that I'd used pretty much all the Arabic I know. He smiled, said "shukran" ("thank you"), and waved good-bye.

*Thanks, Sybil. I completely forgot about Opera having a cafe--we had lived here for at least six months before we realized it was up there, and always forget about it when we're thinking about where to eat. Guess we should expand our horizons and give it a try sometime, since I know that at least their desserts are good.

Photo effects courtesy of Sybil - Thanks!

One year down . . .

As my Facebook friends will already know, yesterday marked a major milestone for us--it was exactly a year ago yesterday that our flight from Dulles arrived in Doha. It may say something about the extent to which we're becoming part of Doha life that the reason I didn't post yesterday is that I was attending a board meeting of the Doha Players, our local community theater group. They needed someone on the board with experience in drafting constitutions, bylaws, and generally doing the nitty-gritty legal-type stuff involved in governing such an organization, so I stepped up to put my legal skills to work in a different setting.

Hitting the one-year mark caused me to reminisce a little about our first night here. To back up a bit, we were fortunate to be flown business class by my employer on Qatar Airways from the DC area to Doha. That meant getting to relax at the Virgin Atlantic lounge in Dulles International Airport; as it happened, we were flying out on Oscars night and managed to catch almost an hour of the show in the lounge while enjoying the free food and cocktails. Fast forward 18 hours or so, after a very restful flight with excellent food and on-demand videos to make the time go faster. We managed to get through the Doha airport in very little time, thanks to the VIP meet-and-greet service that Qtel gets for its new employees; this means sitting in a lounge and taking advantage of free snacks, juice, etc. while someone else deals with immigration formalities. The Qtel driver was there as promised, and drove us to the Somerset serviced apartments, which we would call home for about two and a half months.

Since we got into Doha in the evening and hadn't eaten on the plane for a few hours, we decided to check out the American Grill, a sit-down casual place located inside the Somerset and a bit like Friday's or Ruby Tuesday's. As we sat down for dinner, an American woman at the next table over changed channels on the TV on the wall, and lo and behold, it was the Oscars being broadcast on tape delay. In fact, the show was within a couple of minutes of where we had left it in DC, so the whole trip seemed rather surreal . . . it was like we had teleported from in front of a TV set at Dulles to the same TV set in Doha. (Jet lag undoubtedly colored our perception in this regard.)

Now it's time for a candid assessment of this place after a year, at least as candid as we feel that we can be when I still want to keep living and working here for a while. Following a vote of the family, here are the top 10 things that we like about Doha:

10. The fact that we have Chili's, Applebee's, and T.G.I. Friday's for when we want a taste of home
9. Juice stalls - these are little hole-in-the-wall places that serve up fresh, delicious, and cheap fruit juices (more like a fruit puree) in nearly every imaginable flavor
8. Weekend brunches at the hotels, especially the holiday brunches, which are even more over-the-top - I had never before seen a buffet with caviar and foie gras stations!
7. The desert
6. The fact that high temperatures are in the 80s while our friends back home are shoveling snow
5. The Museum of Islamic Art
4. Morgan's school, International School of London in Qatar - it's nearly as good as Washington International School, where she went to two years of preschool plus kindergarten, but costs less than half as much; plus we think it's way cool that the 20 kids in her class represent at least a dozen different nationalities
3. Souk Waqif
2. The fact that we can get to some really amazing places for a week, or even a weekend, that would be completely unrealistic destinations from the States for anything less than a two-week trip
1. Six weeks of paid vacation per year, plus two week-long Islamic holidays!

And here are the things we really don't like:

10. Having only one place, located all the way across town, to buy booze (at least it's available, though!)
9. The fact that the highs are in the 120s here while our friends back home are enjoying "normal" summer temperatures, which are more like spring here
8. The fact that Ramadan is strictly enforced in public on Muslims and non-Muslims alike with the exception of a handful of hotel restaurants; in a place where there isn't much to do other than going to restaurants anyway, this means that the place pretty much shuts down for a month
7. The fact that road trips outside of Qatar require passing through Saudi Arabia; since Qatar is about the size of Connecticut and we have no interest in experiencing the "hospitality" of our southern neighbors, that doesn't leave a lot of places to go by car
6. Lack of cultural stimulation -- there's only one real museum in town, the Art Center closed in December, there's no ballet and not much theater. The philharmonic is trying, though!
5. Housing costs that are kept at artificially-high (and ludicrous) levels due to protectionist restrictions on property ownership by foreigners--is a three-bedroom bungalow here really worth over twice what we paid for rent on a large two-bedroom flat in London overlooking Hyde Park just a few years ago?
4. Infrastructure that is not at all in keeping with a country ranked first or second globally by GDP per capita, depending on whom you ask; public transportation and roads are a joke and driving is a nightmare (see #1 below)
3. The sense of entitlement/superiority on the part of a certain segment of the population here, who treat everyone else as either an unimportant nuisance who should get out of their way or as their slave
2. The dust - I've missed more days of work and Morgan has missed more school due to illness here in twelve months than in the three previous years combined.
1. The drivers (this wasn't even close!) - the same people who stroll at a leisurely pace through the shopping malls, four or five abreast, and fail to show any sense of urgency in their work, seem to be the same ones who like to get six inches behind you in their Land Cruiser and flash their high-beams at you until you move out of their way so that they can get to the coffee shop two minutes faster.

As always, your comments are welcome.

Bumper Stickers

The other day on my way to Arabic class, we circled a roundabout behind the colorful van emblazoned with a message similar to "Want to learn more about Islam? Stop me to find out how." At the time, Steve and I were listening to "Personal Jesus," which in my mind was somehow morphing into "Personal Allah." I've been thinking a fair bit lately about similarities between the Islam practiced here and the prevailing type of Christianity found back in the Bible Belt. I think the bumper stickers here can pretty well summarize the direction of my thoughts. Far more prevalently than even back home, one sees cars plastered with bumper stickers of a religious variety (almost exclusively, except for those goofy cartoon boy outlines or sometimes some sort of a national pride sticker). The most common are "Masha Allah," which I'm going to translate as "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow," but also conveys a sense of divine fate akin to "Thy Will Be Done," and "Alhamdulillah," which apparently comes from the same root as "Hallelujah" and is "Thanks Be to God." A third phrase that nearly always makes me think of home when I hear it is "Insha'allah," which in my mind becomes "Good Lord Willing." This one is also the root of the Spanish "Ojala." It implies that nothing in the future is certain, but all is dependent on God's will. (Of course, sometimes it has a particular usage trending more toward whatever is being discussed is only going to happen through divine intervention! Context and user intent are key ...)

They say it's your birthday . . .

What is there for a nine-year-old American girl to do in Doha? Admittedly not as much as in DC, but more than you might think, and Morgan has had a pretty eventful couple of weeks. We thought her birthday would be a good chance to update everyone on what's new with her.













On the 14th, Morgan and a few of her classmates performed an adaptation of the Roald Dahl book Matilda for other Year 4, 5, and 6 students (the equivalent of 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade, respectively, in the U.S. system) and parents. They wrote and staged the play themselves, and pretty much did everything from casting to props and directing. (Ella did give them a hand with hair and makeup.) All of the kids performed beautifully, and Morgan seemed to be entirely in her comfort zone hamming it up as Mrs. Wormwood.













Five days later, Morgan and her teammates from the Gymnastics Academy performed in a competition with other local programs. As with the competition in which she participated last year, medals were awarded to all kids who received at least 14 points out of 20 based on their ability to perform ten skills. The judging was much tougher than last time, when all of the kids from Morgan's program--and one-third to one-half of the participants from elsewhere--walked away with medals. This time about half the kids in Morgan's gym received medals, and the other gyms received no more than two or three each. Morgan stayed calm throughout, did her best, and managed to score 16 out of 20. That means she will definitely be party of the contingent representing her gym in the next competition in April, and may be competing in May as well.













Next, Morgan had the good fortune of having regular classes canceled on her birthday for the school's sports day. She surprised us and herself by not only taking first place in the high jump among the Year 4 girls, but also beating the girls from Years 5 and 6, despite her rather unconventional technique. Who knew that doing an airborne forward roll over the crossbar would be an effective way to perform the high jump?

As for the birthday celebration, Morgan managed to stretch it out for three days:

Day 1 (Wednesday) - Morgan celebrated her birthday at school with homemade cupcakes and was serenaded with renditions of "Happy Birthday" in four languages--English, French, Arabic, and Dutch. A classmate also performed the song in sign language for her.

Day 2 (Thursday) - Ella took Morgan and a few friends from school bowling after sports day, and Morgan won with a 98. (Not bad for someone who barely weighs 50 pounds!) Then we had dinner with some friends at the Grand Hyatt's casual pizza restaurant, which uses a wood-fired oven to make pizza that is the best we've had in Doha and not far from our gold standard of Two Amys in Washington. The staff prepared a special birthday mini-cheesecake for Morgan, and she was serenaded again, this time with "Happy Birthday" in English, French, and Afrikaans.

Day 3 (Friday) - A dozen of Morgan's friends came to our house for a "Wicked"-themed party, most of them dressed as their favorite good or bad witch. Ella & Morgan taught them the song "Popular," with each girl taking just a few lines, and the girls did a performance for parents at the end. Some of the girls apparently don't like singing nearly as much as Morgan, but they generally seemed to have a good time anyway. Of course, the highlight for me was the excellent chocolate cake (topped with chocolate ganache) that Ella made from scratch; it was actually good enough to make the rest OK.

The Blame Game

As many of my fellow Qatar-based expats can confirm, banking services here leave a lot to be desired. However, even by the low standards that I've gotten accustomed to, the events of the past 24 hours warrant special mention.

It started the 25th, which is payday each month at Qtel. The electronic deposit of my paycheck wasn't completed until after 6 pm--several hours later than usual--and the funds were still not made available as of bedtime.

This morning I checked, and finally QNB was showing that my paycheck was available. Good news. Unfortunately, I needed to withdraw cash and discovered that the ATM in our compound was out of service, and the ATM in Qtel Tower gave me a cryptic message about being "unable to process" my transaction. I called QNB and was told (thankfully) that there was nothing wrong with my card or my account, but of course no explanation was given as to why I couldn't withdraw cash with a properly-functioning card from an account that had plenty of funds.

After work this evening the compound ATM still wasn't working, but we headed out to do our grocery shopping assuming we would be able to use a credit or debit card. Unfortunately, the staff at Carrefour notified us that their machines weren't working for any credit or debit transactions due to an issue with QNB. Since we aren't in the habit of carrying large sums of cash, we had to leave our full cart at the checkout register, and exited the store muttering a few choice expletives about QNB.

Ella and I shared a chuckle about how well the term "qatarded" fit the whole experience--apologies to the mentally challenged, as this label is a bit unfair to them--and I started a mental sketch of a blog post that would describe the issues we've had with QNB. (It would be a very long post.)

Fast forward to later in the evening. I'm dropping off my shirts at the cleaners and chatting with a friendly, distinguished-looking Qatari gentleman who jokingly tells the Pakistani at the counter that I'm Steve Martin after I give the guy only my first name. (I don't think the store clerk got the reference.) The Qatari gentleman asks where I'm from, and responds "very nice" when I say I'm from the U.S. Then he asks where I work, and I say I work for Qtel. He then tells me that Qtel's network to QNB has been down all day so that no credit card transactions can be posted. Oops.

While I don't have a problem poking fun at QNB when I encounter a problem that arises out of their complete incompetence, it sounds like in this case there may be a bit more to the story than I'd thought. In any event, we'll just cross our fingers that tomorrow we can finally take out cash, buy our groceries, and do all of the things we used to take for granted.

"Idol" Hands

For quite a while I had been mulling over a blog post about how technology continues to shrink the distance from home for expats. I would have described some of the cool toys that let us keep in touch with friends and family, access entertainment from home, etc., and how things have changed since our previous overseas stints. A future post may go into a little more detail on that, but today I had to share a lesson about how sometimes the simplest solution is best.

By way of background, getting American TV programming in Qatar isn't difficult at all, but finding what you want is like hunting a needle in a haystack. Some programs are listed in the daily newspapers, with varying degrees of accuracy. Normally when we do find a show we like it's at least a season behind and we've already seen it.

For these reasons, expats often go to great lengths (and expense) to get TV shows from home. One pricey option is the DVD boxed set, but that means waiting until the end of the season. For those of us who have U.S. credit cards and billing addresses, Apple TV offers a good but somewhat expensive option for keeping up on current shows. Otherwise, downloading or streaming shows from sites like Megavideo or Hulu is a low-cost but also low-quality way to get the latest episodes.

We have been using some of the download sites, which isn't easy since these sites don't usually allow downloading from overseas, and were proud that we had actually figured out a way to get American Idol onto our TV. First, we set up a VPN connection with a proxy server in the U.S. and downloaded the video. Then we converted the video since the download site uses a format that doesn't work with Apple TV, and transferred the file from the computer to the Apple TV. This all is less complicated than it may sound, but it's very time-consuming. From the time we start downloading a one-hour show until the time we can watch it is at least 5 or 6 hours.

As you can imagine, we don't actually watch a lot of shows this way. However, we wanted to catch up on this season's American Idol and had some free time on our hands for a change, so we managed to download and watch three episodes from last night through today. So far, so good. Then this evening we all sit down to eat our home-delivered pizza (courtesy of Pizza Hut), and just for fun I decide to check the local TV listings. Lo and behold, American Idol is on at 8 pm, but I'm thinking it must be at least a season behind . . . . Actually, it's the current season, and the very next episode following where we had gotten with our downloads. The Arabic subtitles were easy to ignore, and the Arabic commercials provided a bit of fun language practice for Ella.

So it turns out that we can go through the whole convoluted process above to watch a pixelated version of the show on our TV, or we can just flip on the set at 8:00 on Friday night. Guess which one we're going with from now on.

Sports and culture - in the same week!

Last week was a busy one. Doha hosted some of the biggest names in men's tennis for the ExxonMobil Qatar Open, which took place from January 4 through 9. Morgan's school took a group of kids for an entire afternoon to see some of the early rounds, and since I managed to get two free tickets from Qtel, Ella and I joined Morgan to see Nadal play the much lower ranked Bolelli. There wasn't a lot of suspense in the game--Nadal easily won--but the evening temperature was pleasantly cool for Doha (low 60s) and we enjoyed the chance to see some world-class tennis. Unfortunately, a day in the sun had taken its toll on Morgan so we didn't get to stay for the Roger Federer match that followed, but at least we were able to catch most of it on TV when we got home. Here are a couple of photos.












The other big event last week was Doha's annual book fair. We showed up not knowing quite what to expect, but it was enormous--the dozens of book stalls completely filled Doha's sizable convention center. Over half of the books were in Arabic, but there were many in English, especially kids' books, and there was even a French section (see photo). The only minor glitch was that there were no credit card machines available for the merchants even though they apparently were expecting them, but QNB did its part to keep the registers ringing with an ATM truck parked right in front of the main entrance. We managed to walk away with our bag full of books and our wallets empty, so I suppose the evening was a success.












P.S. For those of you with whom I'm not already in touch on Facebook, here's one of those "only in Doha" things that I wouldn't have believed if I hadn't also seen it--a large cheetah riding shotgun in a Nissan SUV with its head out the window like a dog. I just hope it was fed well before its car ride.

http://nickandjoce.blogspot.com/2009/12/cheetah-as-my-co-pilot.html