Ramadan Kareem

Umseya

Last night, the Qatar Foundation (the organization over TAMU) held their annual shindig for Ramadan. It was really a lot of fun and a lot of free food. The purpose of it was to celebrate the halfway mark of Ramadan and teach all their staff about this time of the year simultaneously. They had a few woman doing henna, a huge buffet, fireworks and band playing traditional Arabic music. I posted some pictures from the night. Click here to see them.

A note from the embassy

If you have not heard already, and chances are that you haven’t, the US Embassy has sent out an advisory to Americans located in Doha. We were instructed that over the next week we should stay away from all hotels that are frequented by Americans. We first got word of this on Thursday night (the start of our weekend) and I have to admit it shook me up a little.

A few weeks earlier a friend had knocked on our door at 2:00 AM and it took Kara a while to wake me up. Apparently I have the habit of being able to sleep through anything short of a nuclear explosion (no reference intended). So with this in mind I was wondering if I would be able to wake up in time in the event that we had to do some sort of level three evacuation. My solution was to cross the street buy some Pepsi and watch a couple of movies that we got from Columbia House. I try not to let things like this get to me but when I was in the mall I couldn’t help but look at everybody with a little bit of suspicion. Who’s this new guard? Why are these cars outside my building? Who’s that guy with the towel on his head? Oh crap, there’s 100s of them! Wait, there are always 100s of them, I live in the Middle East.

I then thought to myself as I transitioned of from fear to anger, would they really care if a hotel was targeted? That is to say, other then the financial implications that they would have on them personally. Would they morn for Americans? Did we when a bomb went off in Jakarta a few weeks ago? So I got over my little panic attack and desire to vote for W in the upcoming elections, watched a couple of movies and went to sleep. One bright spot in all of this was the fact that out crisis alert system ran fairly well. In a matter of 5 minutes I got a phone call, SMS message and email alerting us to the situation. In case you were wondering, yes it was my SMS application that was used to send the message :). So no worries, just reviewing our “evacuation plan” and buying bottle water and ducked tape.

Here’s the story on CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/29/qatar.threat/index.html

Ramadan

Ramadan just started over here and it is really emphasizing the fact we don't live in Texas any more. During Ramadan Muslims fast from sunup to sundown and locals work half days. All the shops are closed from 1:00 to about 5 or 6:00. The roads are really quiet for most of the day but during midday, sundown and about 8:00 they fill up all at once. It's because everybody is on the same schedule. Midday go home, sundown go to a big dinner and 8:00 go see friends. It's actually at a point where I ask Kara not to drive during those times. I've seen more accidents in the last couple of days then I have seen all year. The other big thing is since Muslims do not eat, drink, smoke, or come close to any sustenance during the day nobody else can indulge in such luxuries in public either. This does make getting a Big Mac or Mc Arabia impossible because this causes them not to be open during the day. Luckily our cafeteria is gracious enough to serve us a crust of bread and glass of water.

In the malls there are Ramadan decorations very similar to Christmas ones in terms of bright colors and being everywhere. There are also Ramadan sales which we are going to take advantage of when buying our 2nd car. It seems both cultures are more similar then I originally thought.

Power point pro

I have decided to use my College Degree and years of experience as a software developer to help out our local church. How you might ask. Well I’m now the newest member of the presentation team. This basically means I run the power point presentation (ppt) during the service. This is actually more difficult then what I originally expected. When you run ppt for songs it means you have to follow along with the people who are leading them. Well in this church there is not always a concrete plan for how a song will be played or even which songs will be played. This is good for everybody else because it allows for the music to evolve with the current feelings of everybody. Of course if you are an anal retentive control freak it has a different effect. What do you mean you’re going to sing that song, I don’t care what you feel like God was telling you. I have a list and even though it’s hand written on the back of a ATM receipt it’s my list and we’re not changing. Luckily people are gracious enough when the words don’t show up right away during one of these transitions. At least nobody threw their sandals at me.

Driving lessons

We took another trip to the inland sea this weekend. This has become a favorite activity for us because well, there really isn’t a whole lot to do in Doha. I got to actually drive my friends 4x4 down a couple of the dunes. I’m still not excited about bringing the beast out there but I think it will eventually have to happen. When driving up a dune you have to go full speed or you will get stuck and then slow down at the edge or you may roll down sideways which isn’t healthy for anybody. You then slide down the slope and do it again. It’s pretty intimidating because you can’t see the slope you are going down until you are committed to it. Everybody does it so it has to be fun. While in the dunes we saw some camels. This was pretty cool and we got some shots that I will post pretty soon. My favorite part is the snorkeling. I’ve decided that I need to get some fins because even though I don’t sink in the ocean it’s still an effort to use your arms when you are trying to go any sort of distance. Not much else is going on just the usual Ramadan desert life.

Vice Provosts Gone Wild

Word from the mother land

This week a delegation of about 40 representatives from College Station came for the 2004 Academic Convocation. It’s a pretty interesting group of people, they include several vice provosts, deans, professors and students. There is a lot of meetings, social events and idea sharing. So overall it’s a pretty cool thing to see the interaction between the two cultures.

One of the social events was a dinner on a Dhow (two story traditional fishing boat) while it cruised around the bay. The invitation for this stated that it would go from 5:30 to 7:30 and I had assumed we would be meeting with the students. When we got on the boat we learned it was a 4 hour dinner. All I could think of was great another night gone. It wasn’t too bad Kara and I met some people we didn’t know and talked about random things. We were all on the top level of the boat for this part. We then went down to the first floor for our dinner which was the usual Arabic dish. There were lots of meat and bread with a little bit of steamed vegetables.

Then it happened

I’m not going to judge others but personally I disagree with the concept of exotic dancers, strippers or whatever you call them on about 10 different levels. So as I was eating dinner with my wife, a number of other couples and some pretty important people in the TAMU system that I thought we were trying to make a good impression on when we got a surprise. The music was cranked up and out popped a belly dancer that looked like she was one step above a stripper. Not only was she three quarters naked but she was eliciting some interaction from the crowd.

I was told that this was normal and it’s an art. Well I can appreciate going to a ballet and watching that type of dancing or Hawaiian hula girls and guys doing their traditional dance. This was definitely not either. The whole time I was just thinking who thought this was a good idea with this company and maybe next time they could indicate that there will be adult entertainment on the invitation. I was definitely not the only one who was embarrassed but of course the single guys messed with me for not looking. So fun times, I’ll try to post some pictures that the nights photographer took but this is a PG website so there might not be that many.

Geeks in the Middle East

Gitex

This past Thursday I went to Dubai for the regions big tech expo. Basically anybody who had anything to do with technology and has a presence in this region, were trying to hock their goods. I wish I could have spent more time there but because I flew in and out of Dubai on the same day my time was a little limited. I did find a cool PDA / Cell Phone that was a pretty good balance between having a big enough screen and not feeling like you were holding a brick to your head. It’s the Treo 600 from Palm.

Dubai as a city looks amazing. It is somewhere between Dallas and New York. In certain places the streets are lined with high-rises and all their roads are like what you would expect to find in the US. The roads in Doha are good enough but they are in the process of moving from main city streets to actual highways. This is accented by the fact that locals still don’t have any problem sprinting across the road when cars are going 60 and 70 mph.

Gitex

Take this job and shove it

Kara and I have decided that the happiness level in our home would increase exponentially if she did not work at The Learning Center anymore. It was turning out to be a very unrewarding job and experience for her. So she turned in her resignation they smiled and said she would always be welcome back to sub or whatever. She will still be tutoring a 9th grade Qatari girl about 4 times a week and substituting 2 or three times a week. We came to the realization that earning as much money as possible may not make us the happiest. With this plan we will still be able to travel as much as we wanted to but in between trips we won’t be stressing out from work too much.

For those who know me you can probably guess this wasn’t an easy concept for me to grasp. I really had to define what the true value of Kara working a full time job was compared to her taking care of the home, building relationships with locals and working part time. I needed to remind myself there was more to do here then just earn money. We’ll let you know how it goes.

We have a new phone number

eight six seven five three oh nine

We have a new number in Qatar. That’s right the day Kara and I have been waiting for is here. We have a new US number that sounds a lot better then our scratchy dialpad.com system that we were using. It was OK but this is a lot better. It is an phone that uses the Internet instead of traditional landlines. So we can call anywhere in the states for 2.5 cents a minute.

You can now call us but please remember there is an 8 hour time difference (9 hours during daylight savings). So if it is 12:00 pm in Texas it will be 8:00 pm in Doha. I’ll put a clock on our website with the local time as soon as I figure out how to configure the time zones.

Our new phone number is: 210 757 4603. You will be charged just as if you were calling San Antonio. We really look forward to talking to everybody a lot more then we have been.

Beast or Bust

In other news the beast had to get its first checkup yesterday. It kept on dying on me in the middle of traffic. Not a good sign. So the mechanic came out yesterday, looked at the engine, pointed at the carburetor and said it would take him a day and would cost that much. I’m anticipating QR200 (200 Riyals) which is roughly $55.

I was cussing and kicking it on the way in and wondering why I bought it. Then during lunch Kara called and asked if I wanted to sell it because a friend’s husband will pay whatever I did for it. By this time I had already called my mechanic friend. So when I get the beast back I’ll drive it some more and try to make a decision. I don’t know why I want to keep it so bad. I almost feel like I’m obligated to stick it out with the stupid thing and that I shouldn’t take the comfortable way out just because it was giving me some problems.

Close to the same time I got forwarded an email about a ’97 Honda Civic that was for sale. Nice, safe and reliable. Booo, I want the noisy ugly truck that gives me a heart attack when it dies in a roundabout. Decisions. Well that’s life in Doha.

Talking to the Man

Well I am presenting my SMS app to Dr. Pierce Cantrell this morning. For those outside the TAMU IT loop this guy is the man when it comes to IT. He came to Doha to see how the operation was running and to fill some time they want me to give a dog and pony show about my little SMS app. One thing about speaking to the Associate Provost For Information Technology is it’s hard to B.S. him when something doesn’t work right or act like I know what I’m talking about when I don’t.

Everwood in Doha

TV selection for the English speaker in this part of the world is somewhat limited and can be described as vanilla at best. It’s hard to complain, I don’t remember too many Arabic stations in College Station. Well luckily we live in the age of the Internet where my generation has developed the motto of all information, should always be available, should always be free and you better not try any of that dial-up 56kbs crap on me. So instead of watching three year old soaps I’ve downloaded my favorite TV shows via bit torrent.

Not that Everwood and cough Gilmore Girls cough are up for any Emmys but they were Kara’s and my favorite shows when we only got FOX and TBN in Bryan. Whenever I watch them it reminds me of our first few months of marriage when we were living off a $100 for groceries for two weeks and taking walks through the nicer neighborhoods for our entertainment. It’s the same way when you hear a song that reminds you of a certain time in your life. For some reason Marcy’s Playground Sex and Candy always reminds me of the summer I graduated from high school when I was running as a courier for an engineering firm.

So as one of my coping mechanisms for living so far from what I’m used to I download TV Shows and listen to my hometown radio station over the Internet. If the pattern is the same as when I joined the Corps I’ll eventually rely on things like this less and less. I’ll just download Everwood to see if Efrem will end up with the girl or not.