Things I learned from a Muslim

For the past month or so I’ve been meeting with a guy that I met at a mosque. I’ll call him Nick because I don’t know what types of people are in the 200 or so visitors this rant gets each day. Mom, I really think you count for half of those but I’m OK with that. Anyways, so I’ve been meeting with Nick for a while now and he makes no bones about telling me that Christianity is wrong and Islam is right. He has a number of papers from a lot of smart people telling me the same thing. He himself is fairly smart. He’s the son of a veterinarian and is pursuing a technical degree at the local college. He has also memorized verbatim about a third of the Quran. The meetings we have can go from 1 to 4 hours and I have asked that we start having them at a local fast food place. There was something about discussing this stuff in the library of the Qatar Center for the Presentation of Islam that was a little unnerving for me. He graciously obliged me so we have continued our conversation over 7-Ups and Pepsi instead of Arabic tea.



I’ve learned a number of things about Islam at an Academic level. There have not been too many revelations in my heart (notice I didn’t say zero) but there has been a lot of information that would surprise most Americans. The biggest being that Muslims revere Jesus. They love him and think he is one of the greatest prophets. They detest that Christians have turned him into a deity with their polytheistic blasphemy (not my words, just repeating) but they still acknowledge his life and say PBUH (peace be upon him) in most writings when mentioning his name. I’ve talked with Kara about this and she brought up a good point. There are a lot of the same people in the Quran who are in the Bible. That doesn’t mean we see them the say way or associate them with the same characteristics. Nick has a huge misunderstanding with what the Holy Trinity actually is. He sees it as us worshipping three Gods. I explained that it is God in three forms. He wasn’t convinced. I’ve also dispelled a number of myths about Muslims by speaking to Nick. Overall I’ve been very happy with the experience.



My real inspiration for writing this though was not what I’ve learned about Islam but what I have learned about my own faith. I see Nick who knows one third of the Quran by heart and I know maybe 10 verses by heart. He is in the middle of the month of Ramadan where he fasts from food, water and smoking from sun up to sun down. This lasts for approximately 30 days. I’ve never spent this much time fasting or sacrificing to gain a better appreciation of who my God is. I’ve also found that church answers don’t cut it when answering the hard questions he asks me about my faith. Who is Jesus? How can he be both God and Man? What’s up with the Holy Spirit? Why did God need to rest on the seventh day? This has been a huge benefit to me. It has caused me to reevaluate what I actually know and what I think I know. My decision has been that I need to go back to the source and find the answers for myself. I don’t need to fill my bookshelf with another book that mentions one verse for each page and feeds me regurgitated theology. I need to open the Bible and figure out exactly what is in there. It’s not that it has been sitting on my shelf collecting dust but I haven’t been looking at it the way I should have been. So I started last night with Luke and it felt great. Something like sinking my teeth into a nice steak after living off of fruit juice and cheese sticks for a long time. I pray that I will continue with this and not quit half way like I have on so many other projects. Who knew learning about Islam would bring me closer to God.

Virtual Running Club

As some of you know, I consider running one of my hobbies and something that I enjoy doing a lot. Now that it is getting cooler in Doha this is something I can now do more readily without worrying about a heatstroke. So after complaining to a friend of mine that there were no races in Doha he suggested I run the Dubai triathlon. Sounds like a good idea, I think I’ll look it up. Well I found the page for it but was immediately distracted by another race that was listed. There is a half marathon in Dubai this coming December. To me the half marathon is like that old friend that never did you wrong. I have run seven to date and every time I have felt great afterwards. I also have been injured preparing for one. That is something I can not say about its nasty big brother the full marathon. So in mid August I started to get my training on like Donkey Kong. Unfortunately it was a bit demoralizing when the temperature was about 95 degrees at 6:00 am. So after going to Europe I was slow to get started again. What was my solution? Start a running club.



I sent out an email to the Education City Listserv asking who would be interested in training for a half marathon. I got a surprising 10 to 15 replies. So I have been communicating with these people over the listserv for about a month now and occasionally we even run together. Mainly people show up on the weekends other then that most people do their own thing. I guess it is just different from when I was a student and anytime was OK to meet because all your responsibilities were very flexible. So now I’m in charge of a virtual running club.

First Baby Pics

Here they are, Felix's first baby pics. Welcome to a life of being photographed kid. You're going to be able to make a flip book of yourself by the time you are 18 and you have sworn to move to a place where cameras are a religous taboo. Currently Felix is 9cm long top to bottom.

Baby’s heartbeat

Kara and I just heard Felix’s heartbeat for the first time about 30 minutes ago. We saw him shift side to side and stretch his little toothpick arms and give us a big ol scary grin. Not to get too cliché but it was a surreal experience to actually see a form inside of Kara. It’s no longer a little sack of cells that’s simply doing something. It is actually taking a form. The heartbeat is about 140 bpm which makes it sound like he’s going to explode but the Dr. assured me that was normal. Give me 15 years, I’ll have it down to 50 resting. So all and all it was a very cool experience.



I’m actually experiencing the miracle of life (That’s the cliché phrase I was looking for). It’ll be 6 months before he crawls out but it is still a real living thing just sitting in side Kara. Woah. I’ll post the picture that was taken once I can wrestle it away from Kara long enough to get it to my scanner. I’m sure it will look like all the other ones everyone sees but this one will be mine and Kara’s. It’s a pretty heady feeling. It gives a new point to looking at all those baby clothes and early learning fuzzy gadgets.

Episode 71

I can’t feel my legs. But Lieutenant Dan, you aint got no legs.
So I’m back from my Guerilla .Net training. Actually I have been back for 2 weeks. I just wrote this paragraph two weeks ago. My brain is almost up to 70% functionality. The class lasted from 9AM to 9 or 10PM depending on the instructors’ ability to read a 24 hour clock. 21:30? What time is that, 8:30? No, 9:30 and my brain is on the verge of hemorrhaging if you add one more bullet-point to that list. Even with the exhausting schedule I think it was one of the best classes I’ve ever taken. They managed to crowbar more content then a three hour college level course into 5 days and make some of it stick. They even added the drinking aspect of the educational experience. I’m not against having a beer but I when we would wrap up somewhere around 10:00 and everybody headed straight to the bar for a couple of hours I was just amazed. I on the other hand crawled to my room, watched some crappy British TV until I passed out. No alcohol necessary this time. The class was like drinking from a fire hydrant but I really did enjoy it. I even won the programming contest they put on. Actually I got 3rd place … out of 5 people. It was still fun so back off. There were 35 other people in the class who didn’t have the two brain cells left to enter or were to intoxicated to try. Either way my adaptation of rock, paper, scissors to the .NET 2.0 framework got some applause.



Iraqi Airspace
Just another reminder I live where I do and people still find it funny. As we were flying back and I saw a number of Iraqi cities associated with insurgencies and road side bombs I thought how peaceful they looked from the sky. We flew over at night and they were these hazily lit cities with four or 5 highway roads shooting out from each side. Our pilot was kind enough to let everybody know that we have just left Iraqi Airspace. I think even with their professional uniforms and funny Brit accents, they still got a kick out of flying 300 hundred civilians over a war zone even if it was 30,000 feet in the air.



Going back to London
So now that I’m back to my normal routine, I will be leaving for the UK one more time for unrelated training. I will actually be 90 minutes west of London but its close enough. I’m doing a 3 day course to learn a piece of software that will virtualize all of our documents so we don’t have to have any messy human interaction. It should be fun and a whole lot more efficient then the usual process. It will at least be another cool system that makes use of this budget they give us. Here’s a lot of money make something happen. Hmmm … OK. I am glad that we use our budget on functional stuff as apposed to gaudy crap that I see in a lot of other places though. I still wonder what it will be like when this rodeo is over and I have to go back to the real world. I hope I still have my anal frugal ways when cost is a much bigger factor in making a decision then it is now. That won’t be for a while anyways so I’m not going to worry. I think I’ll stop talking on this subject now.



Watching Kids – They scare me
So a friend and colleague is on his way to the states for a conference. He is from Germany and his wife has never been to the states. They also have two kids so they asked if we wouldn’t mind holding the fort down while she got to take advantage of seeing a country she has never been to. No problem it will good to help out a friend and spend some time with some young types. They are really good kids and shouldn’t be a problem but I just realized that I don’t know anything about kids. How do you really interact with them? No wonder adults seemed so awkward when I was a kid. They didn’t know what to say to me. Uhhh, so how’s your retirement strategy shaping up? Well I have a week to try to warm up to them and see if I can get to know them a little better. It honestly scared the crap out of me that I was going to have to hold a conversation with them for about 30 minutes before they went to bed last night. Kara on the other hand does a great job of talking and relating to them. This will just have to be something I work on. I always thought it was strange / pathetic when adults would get so caught up in their kids lives as if they were their kids age as well. I guess they were just trying in some way to relate to their kids. This is something I’ll have to remember when Felix becomes old enough to have his / her own life. Blah.



Speaking of little ones
My sister Jenny and husband Jason are going to be a having a baby around the same time Kara and I are. This will be number three for her and she has definitely been able to share her experience with us. It will be nice for Felix to have a cousin his age growing up. I hope he / she will be close with all of the cousins no matter where we live. I think it would be good for them to be pen pals. Know your family and learn how to write all at the same time. That’s me, always striving for efficiency. Well by the sound of the cracking of my wrists I think that’s all I’ve got to say for right now.